Celery vs Cucumber – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing celery to cucumber, we picked the celery.
Why?
They are both great, of course! But celery came out on top:
Their macros are very comparable; they’re both 95% water with just enough other things to hold them together, and those other things are in approximately the same proportions in both celery and cucumber.
In the category of vitamins, however, celery has a lot more of vitamins A, B2, B3, B6, B9, E, and K, as well as slightly more vitamin C. Cucumber, meanwhile, only boasts slightly higher vitamin B1.
An easy win for celery on the vitamin front!
Minerals are closer, but celery still comes out on top with its notably higher calcium and potassium content. Cucumber has more iron and zinc, but the margin is smaller.
As a point in cucumber’s favor, it has been noted for its anti-inflammatory effect in ways that celery hasn’t, but we don’t think this is enough to say it wins over celery sweeping the vitamins category and coming out top for minerals too.
However! They are both great, so enjoy them both, of course.
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
- Cucumber Extract Beats Glucosamine & Chondroitin… At 1/135th Of The Dose?!
- Some Surprising Truths About Hunger And Satiety ← both celery and cucumber are great for this
Enjoy!
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Pumpkin Protein Crackers
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Ten of these (give or take what size you make them) will give you the 20g protein that most people’s body’s can use at a time. Five of these plus some of one of the dips we list at the bottom will also do it:
You will need
- 1 cup chickpea flour (also called gram flour or garbanzo bean flour)
- 2 tbsp pumpkin seeds
- 1 tbsp chia seeds
- 1 tsp baking powder
- ¼ tsp MSG or ½ tsp low-sodium salt
- 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
Method
(we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)
1) Preheat the oven to 350℉ / 180℃.
2) Combine the dry ingredients in a mixing bowl, and mix thoroughly.
3) Add the oil, and mix thoroughly.
4) Add water, 1 tbsp at a time, mixing thoroughly until the mixture comes together and you have a dough ball. You’ll probably need 3–4 tbsp in total, but do add them one at a time.
5) Roll out the dough as thinly and evenly as you can between two sheets of baking paper. Remove the top layer of the paper, and slice the dough into squares or triangles. You could use a cookie-cutter to make other shapes if you like, but then you’ll need to repeat the rolling to use up the offcuts. So we recommend squares or triangles at least for your first go.
6) Bake them in the oven for 12–15 minutes or until golden and crispy. Enjoy immediately or keep in an airtight container.
Enjoy!
Want to learn more?
For those interested in some things to go with what we have going on today:
- Muhammara ← this is a very nutritionally-dense dip (not to mention tasty; seriously, check out these flavors)
- Hero Homemade Hummus ← a classic
- Plant-Based Healthy Cream Cheese ← also a very respectable option
Take care!
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The Food For Life Cookbook – by Dr. Tim Spector
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We’ve previously reviewed Dr. Spector’s “Food For Life”, and while that was more of an “explanatory science” book, this one takes that science (reiterating it more briefly this time, by way of introduction) and makes a cookbook of it.
The nutritional emphasis in these recipes is on two things: maximizing fiber, and maximizing plant diversity. The recipes are not all vegan or even vegetarian, but they are plant-centric, and if the reader is vegetarian/vegan, then substitutions are easy to make.
The recipes themselves are simple without being boring, and are easy to follow, with full-page photos to accompany them. The science parts are very clear, accessible, and pop-science in style.
Bottom line: if you’d like to incorporate more fiber and more plants into your diet without it being a burden, this book is great for that.
Click here to check out the Food For Life Cookbook, and get cooking for life!
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The Orchid That Renovates Your Gut (Gently)
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The Orchid That Renovates Your Gut (Gently)
Dendrobium officinale is an orchid that’s made its way from Traditional Chinese Medicine into modern science.
Read: Traditional Uses, Phytochemistry, Pharmacology, and Quality Control of Dendrobium officinale
To summarize its benefits, we’ll quote from Dr. Paharia’s article featured in our “what’s happening in the health world” section all so recently:
❝Gut microbes process Dendriobium officinale polysaccharides (DOPs) in the colon, producing short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) and oligosaccharides that alter gut microbial composition and improve human health.
DOPs have been shown to decrease harmful bacteria like E. coli and Staphylococcus while promoting beneficial ones like Bifidobacterium.❞
We don’t stop at secondary sources, though, so we took a look at the science.
Dr. Wu et al. found (we’ll quote directly for these bullet points):
- DOPs have been shown to influence the gut microbiota, such as the abundance of Lactobacillus, Bifidobacterium, Akkermansia, Bacteroides, and Prevotella, and provide different benefits to the host due to structural differences.
- The dietary intake of DOPs has been shown to improve the composition of the gut microbiome and offers new intervention strategies for metabolic diseases such as obesity and type 2 diabetes as well as inflammatory diseases such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and colitis.
- Compared to drug therapy, intervention with DOPs is not specific and has a longer intervention duration
This is consistent with previous research on Dendrobium officinale, such as last year’s:
❝DOP significantly increased benign intestinal microbe proportion (Lactobacillus, etc.), but reduced harmful bacteria (Escherichia shigella) (P < 0.05), and significantly increased butyric acid production (P < 0.05)❞
In summary…
Research so far indicates that this does a lot of good for the gut, in a way that can “kickstart” healthier, self-regulating gut microbiota.
As to its further prospects, check out:
Very promising!
Where can I get it?
We don’t sell it, but for your convenience here’s an example product on Amazon
Be warned, it is expensive though!
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Why Adult ADHD Often Leads To Anxiety & Depression
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ADHD’s Knock-On Effects On Mental Health
We’ve written before about ADHD in adult life, often late-diagnosed because it’s not quite what people think it is:
In women in particular, it can get missed and/or misdiagnosed:
Miss Diagnosis: Anxiety, ADHD, & Women
…but what we’re really here to talk about today is:
It’s the comorbidities that get you
When it comes to physical health conditions:
- if you have one serious condition, it will (usually) be taken seriously
- if you have two, they will still be taken seriously, but people (friends and family members, as well as yes, medical professionals) will start to back off, as it starts to get too complicated for comfort
- if you have three, people will think you are making at least one of them up for attention now
- if you have more than three, you are considered a hypochondriac and pathological liar
Yet, the reality is: having one serious condition increases your chances of having others, and this chance-increasing feature compounds with each extra condition.
Illustrative example: you have fibromyalgia (ouch) which makes it difficult for you to exercise much, shop around when grocery shopping, and do much cooking at home. You do your best, but your diet slips and it’s hard to care when you just want the pain to stop; you put on some weight, and get diagnosed with metabolic syndrome, which in time becomes diabetes with high cardiovascular risk factors. Your diabetes is immunocompromising; you get COVID and find it’s now Long COVID, which brings about Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, when you barely had the spoons to function in the first place. At this point you’ve lost count of conditions and are just trying to get through the day.
If this is you, by the way, we hope at least something in the following might ease things for you a bit:
- Stop Pain Spreading
- Managing Chronic Pain (Realistically!)
- Eat To Beat Chronic Fatigue (While Having The Limitations Of Chronic Fatigue)
- When Painkillers Aren’t Helping, These Things Might
- The 7 Approaches To Pain Management
It’s the same for mental health
In the case of ADHD as a common starting point (because it’s quite common, may or may not be diagnosed until later in life, and doesn’t require any external cause to appear), it is very common that it will lead to anxiety and/or depression, to the point that it’s perhaps more common to also have one or more of them than not, if you have ADHD.
(Of course, anxiety and/or depression can both pop up for completely unrelated reasons too, and those reasons may be physiological, environmental, or a combination of the above).
Why?
Because all the good advice that goes for good mental health (and/or life in general), gets harder to actuate when one had ADHD.
- “Strong habits are the core of a good life”, but good luck with that if your brain doesn’t register dopamine in the same way as most people’s do, making intentional habit-forming harder on a physiological level.
- “Plan things carefully and stick to the plan”, but good luck with that if you are neurologically impeded from forming plans.
- “Just do it”, but oops you have the tendency-to-overcommitment disorder and now you are seriously overwhelmed with all the things you tried to do, when each of them alone were already going to be a challenge.
Overwhelm and breakdown are almost inevitable.
And when they happen, chances are you will alienate people, and/or simply alienate yourself. You will hide away, you will avoid inflicting yourself on others, you will brood alone in frustration—or distract yourself with something mind-numbing.
Before you know it, you’re too anxious to try to do things with other people or generally show your face to the world (because how will they react, and won’t you just mess things up anyway?), and/or too depressed to leave your depression-lair (because maybe if you keep playing Kingdom Vegetables 2, you can find a crumb of dopamine somewhere).
What to do about it
How to tackle the many-headed beast? By the heads! With your eyes open. Recognize and acknowledge each of the heads; you can’t beat those heads by sticking your own in the sand.
Also, get help. Those words are often used to mean therapy, but in this case we mean, any help. Enlist your partner or close friend as your support in your mental health journey. Enlist a cleaner as your support in taking that one thing off your plate, if that’s an option and a relevant thing for you. Set low but meaningful goals for deciding what constitutes “good enough” for each life area. Decide in advance what you can safely half-ass, and what things in life truly require your whole ass.
Here’s a good starting point for that kind of thing:
When You Know What You “Should” Do (But Knowing Isn’t The Problem)
And this is an excellent way to “get the ball rolling” if you’re already in a bit of a prison of your own making:
Behavioral Activation Against Depression & Anxiety
If things are already bad, then you might also consider:
- How To Set Anxiety Aside and
- The Mental Health First-Aid That You’ll Hopefully Never Need ← this is about getting out of depression
And if things are truly at the worst they can possibly be, then:
How To Stay Alive (When You Really Don’t Want To)
Take care!
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How To Heal Psoriasis Naturally
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Nutritionist Julia Davies explains the gut-skin connection (& how to use it to your advantage) in this video:
Inside out
Psoriasis is a chronic autoimmune skin condition, in which the skin renewal process accelerates from 28 days (normal) to 3–5 days, leading to red, scaly patches. It most commonly affects the outer joints (especially elbows & knees) but can appear anywhere, including the scalp and torso.
Autoimmune diseases are often linked to gut barrier integrity issues, as leaky gut syndrome allows toxins/food particles to penetrate the gut lining, triggering an immune response, which means inflammation.
Standard treatments often include topical or systemic immunosuppressants, such as steroids. Such medications suppress the immune response (and thus the symptoms) but they don’t address root causes.
What to do about it, from the root
As you might imagine, part of the key is a non-inflammatory (or ideally, anti-inflammatory) diet. This means starting by removing likely triggers; gluten sensitivity is common so that’s near the top of the list.
At the very top of the list though is sugar*, which is not only pro-inflammatory but also feeds candida in the gut, which is a major driver of leaky gut, as the fungus puts its roots through your intestines (that’s as bad as it sounds).
*as usual, sugar that comes with adequate fiber, such as whole fruit, is fine. Fruit juice, however, is not.
It is likely to see early improvements within 6 weeks, and significant improvement (such as being mostly symptom-free) can take 6–8 months, so don’t give up if it’s day 3 and you’re not cured yet. This is a marathon not a sprint, and you’ll need to maintain things or the psoriasis may return.
In the meantime, it is recommended to do all you reasonably can to help your gut to repair itself, which means a good amount of fiber, and occasional probiotics. Also, focusing on whole, nutrient-dense foods will of course reduce inflammation and improve energy—which can be a big deal, as psoriasis is often associated with fatigue, both because inflammation itself is exhausting (the body is very active, on a cellular level), and because a poor diet is not invigorating.
Outside of diet, stress is often a trigger for flare-ups, so try to manage that too, of course.
For more on all of this, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
Of Brains & Breakouts: The Brain-Skin Doctor
Take care!
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Do you have knee pain from osteoarthritis? You might not need surgery. Here’s what to try instead
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Most people with knee osteoarthritis can control their pain and improve their mobility without surgery, according to updated treatment guidelines from the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care.
So what is knee osteoarthritis and what are the best ways to manage it?
Pexels/Kindelmedia More than 2 million Australians have osteoarthritis
Osteoarthritis is the most common joint disease, affecting 2.1 million Australians. It costs the economy A$4.3 billion each year.
Osteoarthritis commonly affects the knees, but can also affect the hips, spine, hands and feet. It impacts the whole joint including bone, cartilage, ligaments and muscles.
Most people with osteoarthritis have persistent pain and find it difficult to perform simple daily tasks, such as walking and climbing stairs.
Is it caused by ‘wear and tear’?
Knee osteoarthritis is most likely to affect older people, those who are overweight or obese, and those with previous knee injuries. But contrary to popular belief, knee osteoarthritis is not caused by “wear and tear”.
Research shows the degree of structural wear and tear visible in the knee joint on an X-ray does not correlate with the level of pain or disability a person experiences. Some people have a low degree of structural wear and tear and very bad symptoms, while others have a high degree of structural wear and tear and minimal symptoms. So X-rays are not required to diagnose knee osteoarthritis or guide treatment decisions.
Telling people they have wear and tear can make them worried about their condition and afraid of damaging their joint. It can also encourage them to try invasive and potentially unnecessary treatments such as surgery. We have shown this in people with osteoarthritis, and other common pain conditions such as back and shoulder pain.
This has led to a global call for a change in the way we think and communicate about osteoarthritis.
What’s the best way to manage osteoarthritis?
Non-surgical treatments work well for most people with osteoarthritis, regardless of their age or the severity of their symptoms. These include education and self-management, exercise and physical activity, weight management and nutrition, and certain pain medicines.
Education is important to dispel misconceptions about knee osteoarthritis. This includes information about what osteoarthritis is, how it is diagnosed, its prognosis, and the most effective ways to self-manage symptoms.
Health professionals who use positive and reassuring language can improve people’s knowledge and beliefs about osteoarthritis and its management.
Many people believe that exercise and physical activity will cause further damage to their joint. But it’s safe and can reduce pain and disability. Exercise has fewer side effects than commonly used pain medicines such as paracetamol and anti-inflammatories and can prevent or delay the need for joint replacement surgery in the future.
Many types of exercise are effective for knee osteoarthritis, such as strength training, aerobic exercises like walking or cycling, Yoga and Tai chi. So you can do whatever type of exercise best suits you.
Increasing general physical activity is also important, such as taking more steps throughout the day and reducing sedentary time.
Weight management is important for those who are overweight or obese. Weight loss can reduce knee pain and disability, particularly when combined with exercise. Losing as little as 5–10% of your body weight can be beneficial.
Pain medicines should not replace treatments such as exercise and weight management but can be used alongside these treatments to help manage pain. Recommended medicines include paracetamol and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs.
Opioids are not recommended. The risk of harm outweighs any potential benefits.
What about surgery?
People with knee osteoarthritis commonly undergo two types of surgery: knee arthroscopy and knee replacement.
Knee arthroscopy is a type of keyhole surgery used to remove or repair damaged pieces of bone or cartilage that are thought to cause pain.
However, high-quality research has shown arthroscopy is not effective. Arthroscopy should therefore not be used in the management of knee osteoarthritis.
Joint replacement involves replacing the joint surfaces with artificial parts. In 2021–22, 53,500 Australians had a knee replacement for their osteoarthritis.
Joint replacement is often seen as being inevitable and “necessary”. But most people can effectively manage their symptoms through exercise, physical activity and weight management.
The new guidelines (known as “care standard”) recommend joint replacement surgery only be considered for those with severe symptoms who have already tried non-surgical treatments.
I have knee osteoarthritis. What should I do?
The care standard links to free evidence-based resources to support people with osteoarthritis. These include:
- education, such as a decision aid and four-week online course
- self-directed online exercise and yoga programs
- weight management support
- pain management strategies, such as MyJointPain and painTRAINER.
If you have osteoarthritis, you can use the care standard to inform discussions with your health-care provider, and to make informed decisions about your care.
Belinda Lawford, Postdoctoral research fellow in physiotherapy, The University of Melbourne; Giovanni E. Ferreira, NHMRC Emerging Leader Research Fellow, Institute of Musculoskeletal Health, University of Sydney; Joshua Zadro, NHMRC Emerging Leader Research Fellow, Sydney Musculoskeletal Health, University of Sydney, and Rana Hinman, Professor in Physiotherapy, The University of Melbourne
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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