Carrot vs Kale – Which is Healthier?

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Our Verdict

When comparing carrot to kale, we picked the kale.

Why?

These are both known as carotene-containing heavyweights, but kale emerges victorious:

In terms of macros, carrot has more carbs while kale has more protein and fiber. An easy win there for kale.

When it comes to vitamins, both are great! But, carrots contain more of vitamins A, B5, and choline, whereas kale contains more of vitamins B1, B2, B3, B6, B9, C, E, and K. And while carrot’s strongest point is vitamin A, a cup of carrots contains around 10x the recommended daily dose of vitamin A, whereas a cup of kale contains “only” 6x the recommended daily dose of vitamin A. So, did we really need the extra in carrots? Probably not. In any case, kale already won on overall vitamin coverage, by a long way.

In the category of minerals, kale again sweeps. On the one hand, carrots contain more sodium. On the other hand, kale contains a lot more calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, and zinc. Not a tricky choice!

But don’t be fooled: carrots really are a nutritional powerhouse and a great food. Kale is just better—nutritionally speaking, in any case. If you’re making a carrot cake, please don’t try substituting kale; it will not work 😉

Want to learn more?

You might like to read:

Brain Food? The Eyes Have It!

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  • Triphala Against Cognitive Decline, Obesity, & 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.

    Triphala is not just one thing, it is a combination of three plants being used together as one medicine:

    1. Alma (Emblica officinalis)
    2. Bibhitaki (Terminalia bellirica)
    3. Haritaki (Terminalia chebula)

    …generally prepared in a 1:1:1 ratio.

    This is a traditional preparation from ayurveda, and has enjoyed thousands of years of use in India. In and of itself, ayurveda is classified as a pseudoscience (literally: it doesn’t adhere to scientific method; instead, it merely makes suppositions that seem reasonable and acts on them), but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t still have a lot to offer—because, simply put, a lot of ayurvedic medicines work (and a lot don’t).

    So, ayurveda’s unintended job has often been finding things for modern science to test.

    For more on ayurveda: Ayurveda’s Contributions To Science (Without Being Itself Rooted in Scientific Method)

    So, under the scrutiny of modern science, how does triphala stand up?

    Against cognitive decline

    It has most recently come to attention because one of its ingredients, the T. chebula, has been highlighted as effective against mild cognitive impairment (MCI) by several mechanisms of action, via its…

    ❝171 chemical constituents and 11 active constituents targeting MCI, such as flavonoids, which can alleviate MCI, primarily through its antioxidative, anti-inflammatory, and neuroprotective properties. T. Chebula shows potential as a natural medicine for the treatment and prevention of MCI.

    Read in full: The potential of Terminalia chebula in alleviating mild cognitive impairment: a review

    The review was quite groundbreaking, to the extent that it got a pop-science article written about it:

    New review suggests evaluating Tibetan medicinal herb as potential treatment for mild cognitive impairment

    We’d like to talk about those 11 active constituents in particular, but we don’t have room for all of them, so we’ll mention that one of them is quercetin, which we’ve written about before:

    Fight Inflammation & Protect Your Brain, With Quercetin

    For gut health

    It’s also been found to improve gut health by increasing transit time, that is to say, how slowly things move through your gut. Counterintuitively, this reduces constipation (without being a laxative), by giving your gut more time to absorb everything it needs to, and more time for your gut bacteria to break down the things we can’t otherwise digest:

    A comparative evaluation of intestinal transit time of two dosage forms of Haritaki [Terminalia chebula Retz.]

    For weight management

    Triphala can also aid with weight reduction, particularly in the belly area, by modulating our insulin responses to improve insulin sensitivity:

    Efficacy of [triphala], a combination of three medicinal plants in the treatment of obesity; A randomized controlled trial

    Want to try some?

    We don’t sell it, but here for your convenience is an example product on Amazon 😎

    Enjoy!

    Share This Post

  • Neuropsychologist Explains What She’s Got Out Of 6 Years Taking L-Theanine

    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.

    Inka Land, MSc neuropsychology, PgDip(c) Nutrition and Disease, talks about her use of l-theanine and the biochemistry behind it:

    So, what’s the tea?

    While she’s tested over 60 supplements, she regularly uses only a few. L-theanine made the cut, and has been a staple for over six years due to its noticeable effects on her brain, nervous system in general, and gut. Some notes from the video:

    • L-theanine was discovered during university studies as a way to enhance focus and reduce stress. Initially, 50mg doses combined with coffee showed no effect, but increasing to 150mg, paired with 100mg of caffeine, produced significant nootropic benefits.
    • L-theanine enhances sustained focus, enabling prolonged attention on repetitive tasks while avoiding distractions. It’s particularly effective for maintaining concentration during monotonous activities.
    • L-theanine alleviates gut inflammation by boosting antioxidant activity and supporting glutamine metabolism. Combined with l-glutamine, it is more effective for reducing gut inflammation, and she mentions anecdotally that it seemed to help her personally recover quickly from food poisoning.
    • Known for its calming effects, L-theanine reduces anxiety and regulates the nervous system. It is beneficial before stressful or crowded events and has anecdotal support for alleviating social anxiety specifically, though that’s not been formally tested in RCTs (yet). That said, since it has been tested against anxiety in the lab (usually combined with stress tests), it would be strange if it didn’t help alleviate social anxiety too, since what’s required for the nervous system is the same.
    • Studies suggest 100–200mg twice daily, but she personally takes 250mg in the morning with coffee or 200–250mg PRN.

    Want to try some? Here’s an example product on Amazon 😎

    For more on all of this, enjoy (and kindly disregard that she clearly is holding a jar of curcumin in the thumbnail):

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

    Want to learn more?

    You might also like:

    L-Theanine Against Stress, Anxiety, Inflammation, & More

    Take care!

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  • Her Mental Health Treatment Was Helping. That’s Why Insurance Cut Off Her Coverage.

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    Reporting Highlights

    • Progress Denials: Insurers use a patient’s improvement to justify denying mental health coverage.
    • Providers Disagree: Therapists argue with insurers and the doctors they employ to continue covering treatment for their patients.
    • Patient Harm: Some patients backslid when insurers cut off coverage for treatment at key moments.

    These highlights were written by the reporters and editors who worked on this story.

    Geneva Moore’s therapist pulled out her spiral notebook. At the top of the page, she jotted down the date, Jan. 30, 2024, Moore’s initials and the name of the doctor from the insurance company to whom she’d be making her case.

    She had only one chance to persuade him, and by extension Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Texas, to continue covering intensive outpatient care for Moore, a patient she had come to know well over the past few months.

    The therapist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation from insurers, spent the next three hours cramming, as if she were studying for a big exam. She combed through Moore’s weekly suicide and depression assessments, group therapy notes and write-ups from their past few sessions together.

    She filled two pages with her notes: Moore had suicidal thoughts almost every day and a plan for how she would take her own life. Even though she expressed a desire to stop cutting her wrists, she still did as often as three times a week to feel the release of pain. She only had a small group of family and friends to offer support. And she was just beginning to deal with her grief and trauma over sexual and emotional abuse, but she had no healthy coping skills.

    Less than two weeks earlier, the therapist’s supervisor had struck out with another BCBS doctor. During that call, the insurance company psychiatrist concluded Moore had shown enough improvement that she no longer needed intensive treatment. “You have made progress,” the denial letter from BCBS Texas read.

    When the therapist finally got on the phone with a second insurance company doctor, she spoke as fast as she could to get across as many of her points as possible.

    “The biggest concern was the abnormal thoughts — the suicidal ideation, self-harm urges — and extensive trauma history,” the therapist recalled in an interview with ProPublica. “I was really trying to emphasize that those urges were present, and they were consistent.”

    She told the company doctor that if Moore could continue on her treatment plan, she would likely be able to leave the program in 10 weeks. If not, her recovery could be derailed.

    The doctor wasn’t convinced. He told the therapist that he would be upholding the initial denial. Internal notes from the BCBS Texas doctors say that Moore exhibited “an absence of suicidal thoughts,” her symptoms had “stabilized” and she could “participate in a lower level of care.”

    The call lasted just seven minutes.

    Moore was sitting in her car during her lunch break when her therapist called to give her the news. She was shocked and had to pull herself together to resume her shift as a technician at a veterinary clinic.

    “The fact that it was effective immediately,” Moore said later, “I think that was the hardest blow of it all.”

    Many Americans must rely on insurers when they or family members are in need of higher-touch mental health treatment, such as intensive outpatient programs or round-the-clock care in a residential facility. The costs are high, and the stakes for patients often are, too. In 2019 alone, the U.S. spent more than $106.5 billion treating adults with mental illness, of which private insurance paid about a third. One 2024 study found that the average quoted cost for a month at a residential addiction treatment facility for adolescents was more than $26,000.

    Health insurers frequently review patients’ progress to see if they can be moved down to a lower — and almost always cheaper — level of care. That can cut both ways. They sometimes cite a lack of progress as a reason to deny coverage, labeling patients’ conditions as chronic and asserting that they have reached their baseline level of functioning. And if they make progress, which would normally be celebrated, insurers have used that against patients to argue they no longer need the care being provided.

    Their doctors are left to walk a tightrope trying to convince insurers that patients are making enough progress to stay in treatment as long as they actually need it, but not so much that the companies prematurely cut them off from care. And when insurers demand that providers spend their time justifying care, it takes them away from their patients.

    “The issues that we grapple with are in the real world,” said Dr. Robert Trestman, the chair of psychiatry and behavioral medicine at the Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine and chair of the American Psychiatric Association’s Council on Healthcare Systems and Financing. “People are sicker with more complex conditions.”

    Mental health care can be particularly prone to these progress-based denials. While certain tests reveal when cancer cells are no longer present and X-rays show when bones have healed, psychiatrists say they have to determine whether someone has returned to a certain level of functioning before they can end or change their treatment. That can be particularly tricky when dealing with mental illness, which can be fluid, with a patient improving slightly one day only to worsen the next.

    Though there is no way to know how often coverage gets cut off mid-treatment, ProPublica has found scores of lawsuits over the past decade in which judges have sharply criticized insurance companies for citing a patient’s improvement to deny mental health coverage. In a number of those cases, federal courts ruled that the insurance companies had broken a federal law designed to provide protections for people who get health insurance through their jobs.

    Reporters reviewed thousands of pages of court documents and interviewed more than 50 insiders, lawyers, patients and providers. Over and over, people said these denials can lead to real — sometimes devastating — harm. An official at an Illinois facility with intensive mental health programs said that this past year, two patients who left before their clinicians felt they were ready due to insurance denials had attempted suicide.

    Dr. Eric Plakun, a Massachusetts psychiatrist with more than 40 years of experience in residential and intensive outpatient programs, and a former board member of the American Psychiatric Association, said the “proprietary standards” insurers use as a basis for denying coverage often simply stabilize patients in crisis and “shortcut real treatment.”

    Plakun offered an analogy: If someone’s house is on fire, he said, putting out the fire doesn’t restore the house. “I got a hole in the roof, and the windows have been smashed in, and all the furniture is charred, and nothing’s working electrically,” he said. “How do we achieve recovery? How do we get back to living in that home?”

    Unable to pay the $350-a-day out-of-pocket cost for additional intensive outpatient treatment, Moore left her program within a week of BCBS Texas’ denial. The insurer would only cover outpatient talk therapy.

    During her final day at the program, records show, Moore’s suicidal thoughts and intent to carry them out had escalated from a 7 to a 10 on a 1-to-10 scale. She was barely eating or sleeping.

    A few hours after the session, Moore drove herself to a hospital and was admitted to the emergency room, accelerating a downward spiral that would eventually cost the insurer tens of thousands of dollars, more than the cost of the treatment she initially requested.

    How Insurers Justify Denials

    Buried in the denial letters that insurance companies send patients are a variety of expressions that convey the same idea: Improvement is a reason to deny coverage.

    “You are better.” “Your child has made progress.” “You have improved.”

    In one instance, a doctor working for Regence Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Oregon wrote that a patient who had been diagnosed with major depression was “sufficiently stable,” even as her own doctors wrote that she “continued to display a pattern of severe impairment” and needed round-the-clock care. A judge ruled that “a preponderance of the evidence” demonstrated that the teen’s continued residential treatment was medically necessary. The insurer said it can’t comment on the case because it ended with a confidential settlement.

    In another, a doctor working for UnitedHealth Group wrote in 2019 that a teenage girl with a history of major depression who had been hospitalized after trying to take her own life by overdosing “was doing better.” The insurer denied ongoing coverage at a residential treatment facility. A judge ruled that the insurer’s determination “lacked any reasoning or citations” from the girl’s medical records and found that the insurer violated federal law. United did not comment on this case but previously argued that the girl no longer had “concerning medical issues” and didn’t need treatment in a 24-hour monitored setting.

    To justify denials, the insurers cite guidelines that they use to determine how well a patient is doing and, ultimately, whether to continue paying for care. Companies, including United, have said these guidelines are independent, widely accepted and evidence-based.

    Insurers most often turn to two sets: MCG (formerly known as Milliman Care Guidelines), developed by a division of the multibillion-dollar media and information company Hearst, and InterQual, produced by a unit of UnitedHealth’s mental health division, Optum. Insurers have also used guidelines they have developed themselves.

    MCG Health did not respond to multiple requests for comment. A spokesperson for the Optum division that works on the InterQual guidelines said that the criteria “is a collection of established scientific evidence and medical practice intended for use as a first level screening tool” and “helps to move patients safely and efficiently through the continuum of care.”

    A separate spokesperson for Optum also said the company’s “priority is ensuring the people we serve receive safe and effective care for their individual needs.” A Regence spokesperson said that the company does “not make coverage decisions based on cost or length of stay,” and that its “number one priority is to ensure our members have access to the care they need when they need it.”

    In interviews, several current and former insurance employees from multiple companies said that they were required to prioritize the proprietary guidelines their company used, even if their own clinical judgment pointed in the opposite direction.

    “It’s very hard when you come up against all these rules that are kind of setting you up to fail the patient,” said Brittainy Lindsey, a licensed mental health counselor who worked at the Anthem subsidiary Beacon and at Humana for a total of six years before leaving the industry in 2022. In her role, Lindsey said, she would suggest approving or denying coverage, which — for the latter — required a staff doctor’s sign-off. She is now a mental health consultant for behavioral health businesses and clinicians.

    A spokesperson for Elevance Health, formerly known as Anthem, said Lindsey’s “recollection is inaccurate, both in terms of the processes that were in place when she was a Beacon employee, and how we operate today.” The spokesperson said “clinical judgment by a physician — which Ms. Lindsey was not — always takes precedence over guidelines.”

    In an emailed statement, a Humana spokesperson said the company’s clinician reviewers “are essential to evaluating the facts and circumstances of each case.” But, the spokesperson said, “having objective criteria is also important to provide checks and balances and consistently comply with” federal requirements.

    The guidelines are a pillar of the health insurance system known as utilization management, which paves the way for coverage denials. The process involves reviewing patients’ cases against relevant criteria every handful of days or so to assess if the company will continue paying for treatment, requiring providers and patients to repeatedly defend the need for ongoing care.

    Federal judges have criticized insurance company doctors for using such guidelines in cases where they were not actually relevant to the treatment being requested or for “solely” basing their decisions on them.

    Wit v. United Behavioral Health, a class-action lawsuit involving a subsidiary of UnitedHealth, has become one of the most consequential mental health cases of this century. In that case, a federal judge in California concluded that a number of United’s in-house guidelines did not adhere to generally accepted standards of care. The judge found that the guidelines allowed the company to wrongly deny coverage for certain mental health and substance use services the moment patients’ immediate problems improved. He ruled that the insurer would need to change its practices. United appealed the ruling on grounds other than the court’s findings about the defects in its guidelines, and a panel of judges partially upheld the decision. The case has been sent back to the district court for further proceedings.

    Largely in response to the Wit case, nine states have passed laws requiring health insurers to use guidelines that align with the leading standards of mental health care, like those developed by nonprofit professional organizations.

    Cigna has said that it “has chosen not to adopt private, proprietary medical necessity criteria” like MCG. But, according to a review of lawsuits, denial letters have continued to reference MCG. One federal judge in Utah called out the company, writing that Cigna doctors “reviewed the claims under medical necessity guidelines it had disavowed.” Cigna did not respond to specific questions about this.

    Timothy Stock, one of the BCBS doctors who denied Moore’s request to cover ongoing care, had cited MCG guidelines when determining she had improved enough — something judges noted he had done before. In 2016, Stock upheld a decision on appeal to deny continued coverage for a teenage girl who was in residential treatment for major depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and anxiety. Pointing to the guidelines, Stock concluded she had shown enough improvement.

    The patient’s family sued the insurer, alleging it had wrongly denied coverage. Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Illinois argued that there was evidence that showed the patient had been improving. But, a federal judge found the insurer misstated its significance. The judge partially ruled in the family’s favor, zeroing in on Stock and another BCBS doctor’s use of improvement to recommend denying additional care.

    “The mere incidence of some improvement does not mean treatment was no longer medically necessary,” the Illinois judge wrote.

    In another case, BCBS Illinois denied coverage for a girl with a long history of mental illness just a few weeks into her stay at a residential treatment facility, noting that she was “making progressive improvements.” Stock upheld the denial after an appeal.

    Less than two weeks after Stock’s decision, court records show, she cut herself on the arm and leg with a broken light bulb. The insurer defended the company’s reasoning by noting that the girl “consistently denied suicidal ideation,” but a judge wrote that medical records show the girl was “not forthcoming” with her doctors about her behaviors. The judge ruled against the insurer, writing that Stock and another BCBS doctor “unreasonably ignored the weight of the medical evidence” showing that the girl required residential treatment.

    Stock declined to comment. A spokesperson for BCBS said the company’s doctors who review requests for mental health coverage are board certified psychiatrists with multiple years of practice experience. The spokesperson added that the psychiatrists review all information received “from the provider, program and members to ensure members are receiving benefits for the right care, at the right place and at the right time.”

    The BCBS spokesperson did not address specific questions related to Moore or Stock. The spokesperson said that the examples ProPublica asked about “are not indicative of the experience of the vast majority of our members,” and that it is committed to providing “access to quality, cost-effective physical and behavioral health care.”

    A Lifelong Struggle

    A former contemporary dancer with a bright smile and infectious laugh, Moore’s love of animals is eclipsed only by her affinity for plants. She moved from Indiana to Austin, Texas, about six years ago and started as a receptionist at a clinic before working her way up to technician.

    Moore’s depression has been a constant in her life. It began as a child, when, she said, she was sexually and emotionally abused. She was able to manage as she grew up, getting through high school and attending Indiana University. But, she said, she fell back into a deep sadness after she learned in 2022 that the church she found comfort in as a college student turned out to be what she and others deemed a cult. In September of last year, she began an intensive outpatient program, which included multiple group and individual therapy sessions every week.

    Moore, 32, had spent much of the past eight months in treatment for severe depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and anxiety when BCBS said it would no longer pay for the program in January.

    The denial had come to her without warning.

    “I was starting to get to the point where I did have some hope, and I was like, maybe I can see an actual end to this,” Moore said. “And it was just cut off prematurely.”

    At the Austin emergency room where she drove herself after her treatment stopped, her heart raced. She was given medication as a sedative for her anxiety. According to hospital records she provided to ProPublica, Moore’s symptoms were brought on after “insurance said they would no longer pay.”

    A hospital social worker frantically tried to get her back into the intensive outpatient program.

    “That’s the sad thing,” said Kandyce Walker, the program’s director of nursing and chief operating officer, who initially argued Moore’s case with BCBS Texas. “To have her go from doing a little bit better to ‘I’m going to kill myself.’ It is so frustrating, and it’s heartbreaking.”

    After the denial and her brief admission to the hospital emergency department in January, Moore began slicing her wrists more frequently, sometimes twice a day. She began to down six to seven glasses of wine a night.

    “I really had thought and hoped that with the amount of work I’d put in, that I at least would have had some fumes to run on,” she said.

    She felt embarrassed when she realized she had nothing to show for months of treatment. The skills she’d just begun to practice seemed to disappear under the weight of her despair. She considered going into debt to cover the cost of ongoing treatment but began to think that she’d rather end her life.

    “In my mind,” she said, “that was the most practical thing to do.”

    Whenever the thought crossed her mind — and it usually did multiple times a day — she remembered that she had promised her therapist that she wouldn’t.

    Moore’s therapist encouraged her to continue calling BCBS Texas to try to restore coverage for more intensive treatment. In late February, about five weeks after Stock’s denial, records show that the company approved a request that sent her back to the same facility and at the same level of care as before.

    But by that time, her condition had deteriorated so severely that it wasn’t enough.

    Eight days later, Moore was admitted to a psychiatric hospital about half an hour from Austin. Medical records paint a harrowing picture of her condition. She had a plan to overdose and the medicine to do it. The doctor wrote that she required monitoring and had “substantial ongoing suicidality.” The denial continued to torment her. She told her doctor that her condition worsened after “insurance stopped covering” her treatment.

    Her few weeks stay at the psychiatric hospital cost $38,945.06. The remaining 10 weeks of treatment at the intensive outpatient program — the treatment BCBS denied — would have cost about $10,000.

    Moore was discharged from the hospital in March and went back into the program Stock had initially said she no longer needed.

    It marked the third time she was admitted to the intensive outpatient program.

    A few months later, as Moore picked at her lunch, her oversized glasses sliding down the bridge of her nose every so often, she wrestled with another painful realization. Had the BCBS doctors not issued the denial, she probably would have completed her treatment by now.

    “I was really looking forward to that,” Moore said softly. As she spoke, she played with the thick stack of bracelets hiding the scars on her wrists.

    A few weeks later, that small facility closed in part because of delays and denials from insurance companies, according to staff and billing records. Moore found herself calling around to treatment facilities to see which ones would accept her insurance. She finally found one, but in October, her depression had become so severe that she needed to be stepped up to a higher level of care.

    Moore was able to get a leave of absence from work to attend treatment, which she worried would affect the promotion she had been working toward. To tide her over until she could go back to work, she used up the money her mother sent for her 30th birthday.

    She smiles less than she did even a few months ago. When her roommates ask her to hang out downstairs, she usually declines. She has taken some steps forward, though. She stopped drinking and cutting her wrists, allowing scar tissue to cover her wounds.

    But she’s still grieving what the denial took from her.

    “I believed I could get better,” she said recently, her voice shaking. “With just a little more time, I could discharge, and I could live life finally.”

    Kirsten Berg contributed research.

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    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? 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

    ❝I tried to use your calculator for heart health, and was unable to enter in my height or weight. Is there another way to calculate? Why will that field not populate?❞

    (this is in reference to yesterday’s main feature “How Are You, Really? And How Old Is Your Heart?“)

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    ❝I may have missed it, but how much black pepper provides benefits?❞

    So, for any new subscribers joining us today, this is about two recent main features:

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    • 5–20mg of piperine is the dosage range used in most scientific studies we looked at
    • 10mg is a very common dosage found in many popular supplements
    • That’s the mass of piperine though, so if taking it as actual black pepper rather than as an extract, ½ teaspoon is considered sufficient to enjoy benefits.

    ❝I loved the health benefits of pepper. I do not like pepper. Where can I get it as a supplement?❞

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    You can buy piperine (black pepper extract) by itself as a supplement in powder form, but if you don’t like black pepper, you will probably not like this powder either. We couldn’t find it readily in capsule form.

    You can buy piperine (black pepper extract) as an adjunct to other supplements, with perhaps the most common/popular being turmeric capsules that also contain 10mg (or more) piperine per capsule. Shop around if you like, but here’s one that has 15mg piperine* per capsule, for example.

    *They call it “Bioperine®” but that is literally just piperine. Same goes if you see “Absorbagen™”, it’s still just piperine.

    ❝What do you mean when you say that something is adaptogenic?❞

    Simple version: it means it helps the body adapt to stress, by adjusting the body’s natural responses. Thus, adaptogenic supplements can be contrasted with tranquilizing drugs that mask stress by brute force, for example.

    Technical version: adaptogenic activity refers to improving physiological stress resilience, such as by moderating and modulating hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis signaling, and/or by regulating levels of endogenic compounds involved in the cellular stress response.

    Read more (technical version):

    Effects of Adaptogens on the Central Nervous System and the Molecular Mechanisms Associated with Their Stress-Protective Activity

    Read more (simple version):

    European Medicines Agency’s Reflection Paper On The Adaptogenic Concept

    Enjoy!

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  • Apple vs Pear – Which is Healthier?

    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.

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    When comparing apple to pear, we picked the pear.

    Why?

    Both are great! But there’s a category that puts pears ahead of apples…

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  • Relieve GERD and Acid Reflux with Stretches and Exercises

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    Looking for relief from GERD or acid reflux? Today we’re featuring an amazing video by Dr. Jo, packed with stretches and exercises designed to ease those symptoms.

    Here’s a quick rundown, in case you don’t have time to watch the whole video.

    If you’re not familiar with GERD, you can find our simple explanation of GERD here. Or, if you’re on the other end of the spectrum and want to do a deeper dive on the topic, we reviewed a great book on the topic).

    1. Mobilize Your SEM Muscle

    The sternocleidomastoid (SEM) muscle, if tight, can aggravate acid reflux. Dr. Jo shows how to gently mobilize this muscle by turning your head while holding the SEM in place. It’s simple but effective.

    2. Portrait Pose Stretch

    Stretch out that SEM with the Portrait Pose. Place your hand on your collarbone, turn your head away, side bend, and look up. Hold for 30 seconds. You’ll feel the tension melting away.

    3. Seated Cat-Cow Motion

    Open up your stomach area with this easy exercise. Sit down, roll your body forward, arch your back (Cow), then curl your spine and tuck your chin (Cat). Alternate for 30 seconds and feel the difference.

    4. Quadruped Cat-Cow with Breathing

    Similar to the seated cat-cow, the quadruped cat-cow focuses on flexing the lower spine whilst on all fours. Bonus tip: focus on deep belly breathing during the exercise. This helps improve digestion and ease reflux symptoms.

    5. Exaggerated Pelvic Tilt

    Lie on your back and tilt your pelvis back and forth. This loosens up the abdominal area and helps everything flow better.

    6. Trunk Rotation

    Lie down, bend your knees, and rotate them to one side. Hold for 30 seconds, then switch sides. It’s a great way to relax and stretch your abdominal muscles.

    We know this is a quick overview (sorry if it seems rushed!), but if you have a few more minutes on your hand you can watch the whole video below.

    Feel better soon! And if you have any favorite tips or videos to share, email us at 10almonds.

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