Keep Cellulite At Bay
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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 😎
❝Does anything actually get rid of cellulite? Nothing seems to❞
Let’s get the bad news over with in one go:
Nothing (that the scientific world currently knows of) can get rid of cellulite permanently, nor completely guard against it proactively. Which, given that it affects up to 98% of women to some degree, and often shows up not long after puberty (though it can appear at any time and often increases later in life), any pre-emptive health regime would need to be started as a child in any case.
As with many things that predominantly affect women, the world of medicine isn’t entirely sure what causes it, let alone how to effectively treat it.
Obviously hormones are implicated, namely estrogen.
Obviously adiposity is implicated, because one can’t have dimples in one’s fat if one doesn’t have enough fat to dimple.
Other hypothesized contributory factors include genetics, poor diet, inactivity, unhealthy lifestyle (in ways not previously mentioned, e.g. use of alcohol, tobacco, etc), accumulated toxins, and pregnancy.
Here’s an old paper (from 2004); today’s reviews say pretty much the same thing, but we love how succinctly (albeit, somewhat depressingly) this abstract states how little we know and how little we can do:
Cellulite: a review of its physiology and treatment
However, all is not lost!
There are some things that can affect how much cellulite we get, and there are some things that can reduce it, and even some things that can get rid of it completely—albeit temporarily.
First, a quick refresher on what it actually is, physiologically speaking: cellulite occurs when connective tissue bands pull the skin down in places, where fat tissue has been able to squeeze through. One of the reasons it is hypothesized women get this more than men is because our fat is not merely different in distribution and overall percentage, but also in how the fat cells stack up; we generally have have of a vertical stacking structure going on, while men generally have a more horizontal structure. This means that it can be easier for ours to get moved about differently, causing the connective tissue to pull on the skin unevenly in places.
With that in mind…
Prevention is, as we say, probably impossible if your body is running on estrogen. However, those contributory factors we mentioned above? Most of those are modifiable, including these things that it is hypothesized can reduce it:
Diet: as it seems to be worsened by inflammation (what isn’t?), an anti-inflammatory diet is recommended.
Exercise: there are three things here: 1) exercises to improve circulation and thus the body’s ability to sort things out by itself 2) HIIT exercise to reduce body fat percentage, if one has a high enough starting body fat percentage for that to be a healthy goal 3) mobility exercises, to ensure our connective tissues are the right amount of mobile.
Creams and lotions
These reduce the superficial appearance of cellulite, without actually treating the thing itself. Mostly they are caffeine-based, which when used topically increases blood flow and works as a local diuretic, reducing the water content of the fat cells, diminishing the appearance of the cellulite by making each fat cell physically smaller (while still containing the same amount of fat, and it’ll bounce back in size as soon as the body can restore osmotic balance).
Medical procedures
There are too many of these to discuss them all separately, but they all work on the principle of breaking up the tough bands of connective tissue to eliminate the dimpling of cellulite.
The methods they use vary from ultrasound to cryolipolysis to lasers to “vacuum-assisted precise tissue release”, which involves a suction pump and a multipronged robotic assembly with needles to administer anaesthetic as it goes and small blades to cut the connective tissues under the skin:
Tissue Stabilized–Guided Subcision for the Treatment of Cellulite
That last one definitely sounds like the least fun, but it’s also the only one that doesn’t take months to maybe see results.
Cellulite can and almost certainly will come back after all of these.
Home remedies
Aside from at-home versions of the above (not the robots with vacuum pumps and needles and microblades, hopefully, but for example homemade caffeine creams), and of course diet and exercise which can be considered “home remedies”, there are two more things worth mentioning:
Dry brushing: using a body brush to, as the name suggests, simply brush one’s skin. The “dry” aspect here is simply that it’s not done in the bath or shower; it’s done while dry. It can improve local circulation of blood and lymph, allowing for better detoxification and redistribution of needed bodily resources.
Here’s an example dry brushing body brush on Amazon; this writer has one and hates it, but I’ve also tried with other kinds of brush and hate them too, so it seems to be a me thing rather than a brush thing, and I have desisted in trying, now. Maybe you will like it better; many people do.
Self-massage: or massage by someone else, if that’s an option for you and you prefer. In this case, it works by a different mechanism than dry brushing; this time it’s working by the same principle as the medical techniques described in the previous section; it’s physically breaking down the toughened bits of connective tissue.
Here’s an example wooden massage roller on Amazon; this writer has one and loves it; it’s sooooooo good. I got it as a matter of general maintenance for my fascia, but it’s also very good if I get a muscular pain now and again. As for cellulite, I personally get just a little cellulite sometimes (in the backs of my thighs), and whenever I use this regularly, it goes away for at least a while.
A quick note in closing
Cellulite is normal for women and is not unhealthy. Much like gray hair for example, it’s something that can be increased by poor health, but the thing itself isn’t intrinsically unhealthy, and most of us get it to some degree at some point.
Nevertheless, aesthetic factors can also have a role to play in mental health, and we tend to feel best when we like the way our body looks. If for you that means wanting less/no cellulite, then the above are some ways towards that.
As a bonus, most of the nonmedical options are directly good for the physical health anyway, so doing them is of course good.
In particular that last one (the wooden massage roller), because that connective tissue we talked about? It matters for a lot more than just cellulite, and is heavily implicated in a lot of kinds of chronic pain, so it pays to keep it in good health:
Fascia: Why (And How) You Should Take Care Of Yours
(that article, also written by this same writer by the way, suggests a vibrating foam roller—those are very popular; I just really love my wooden one, and find it more effective)
Take care!
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You’ve Got Questions? We’ve Got Answers!
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.
From Cucumbers To Kindles
Q: Where do I get cucumber extract?
A: You can buy it from BulkSupplements.com (who, despite their name, start at 100g packs)
Alternatively: you want it as a topical ointment (for skin health) rather than as a dietary supplement (for bone and joint health), you can extract it yourself! No, it’s not “just juice cucumbers”, but it’s also not too tricky.
Click Here For A Quick How-To Guide!
Q: Tips for reading more and managing time for it?
A: We talked about this a little bit in yesterday’s edition, so you may have seen that, but aside from that:
- If you don’t already have one, consider getting a Kindle or similar e-reader. They’re very convenient, and also very light and ergonomic—no more wrist strain as can occur with physical books. No more eye-strain, either!
- Consider making reading a specific part of your daily routine. A chapter before bed can be a nice wind-down, for instance! What’s important is it’s a part of your day that’ll always, or at least almost always, allow you to do a little reading.
- If you drive, walk, run, or similar each day, a lot of people find that’s a great time to listen to an audiobook. Please be safe, though!
- If your lifestyle permits such, a “reading retreat” can be a wonderful vacation! Even if you only “retreat” to your bedroom, the point is that it’s a weekend (or more!) that you block off from all other commitments, and curl up with the book(s) of your choice.
Q: Any study tips as we approach exam season? A lot of the productivity stuff is based on working life, but I can’t be the only student!
A: We’ve got you covered:
- Be passionate about your subject! We know of no greater study tip than that.
- Find a willing person and lecture them on your subject. When one teaches, two learn!
- Your mileage may vary depending on your subject, but, find a way of studying that’s fun to you!
- If you can get past papers, get as many as you can, and use those as your “last minute” studying in the week before your exam(s). This will prime you for answering exam-style questions (and leverage state-dependent memory). As a bonus, it’ll also help ease any anxiety, because by the time of your exam it’ll be “same old, same old”!
Q: Energy drinks for biohacking, yea or nay?
A: This is definitely one of those “the dose makes the poison” things!
- Caffeine, in and of itself, can be healthy in moderation for most people.
- Taurine has assorted benefits at safe dosages:
- Other ingredients often have health benefits too.
But… The generally agreed safe dose of taurine is around 3g/day for most people; a standard Red Bull contains 1g.
That math would be simple, but… if you eat meat (including poultry or fish), that can also contain 10–950mg per 100g. For example, tuna is at the high end of that scale, with a standard 12oz (340g) tin already containing up to 3.23g of taurine!
And sweetened carbonated beverages in general have so many health issues that it’d take us a full article to cover them.
Short version? Enjoy in moderation if you must, but there are definitely better ways of getting the benefits they may offer.
Q: Best morning routine?
A: The best morning routine is whatever makes you feel most ready to take on your day!
This one’s going to vary a lot—one person’s morning run could be another person’s morning coffee and newspaper, for example.
In a nutshell, though, ask yourself these questions:
- How long does it take me to fully wake up in the morning, and what helps or hinders that?
- When I get out of bed, what do I really need before I can take on my day?
- If I could have the perfect morning, what would it look like?
- What can evening me do, to look after morning me’s best interests? (Semi-prepare breakfast ready? Lay out clothes ready? Running shoes? To-Do list?)
Q: I’m curious how much of these things you actually use yourselves, and are there any disagreements in the team? In a lot of places things can get pretty heated when it’s paleo vs vegan / health benefits of tea/coffee vs caffeine-abstainers / you need this much sleep vs rise and grinders, etc?
A: We are indeed genuinely enthusiastic about health and productivity, and that definitely includes our own! We may or may not all do everything, but between us, we probably have it all covered. As for disagreements, we’ve not done a survey, but if you take an evidence-based approach, any conflict will tend to be minimized. Plus, sometimes you can have the best of both!
- You could have a vegan paleo diet (you’d better love coconut if you do, though!
- There is decaffeinated coffee and tea (your taste may vary)
- You can get plenty of sleep and rise early (so long as an “early to bed, early to rise” schedule suits you!)
Interesting note: humans are social creatures on an evolutionary level. Evolution has resulted in half of us being “night owls” and the other half “morning larks”, the better to keep each other safe while sleeping. Alas, modern life doesn’t always allow us to have the sleep schedule that’d suit each of us best individually!
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Is Sugar The New Smoking?
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 😎
❝Could you do a this or that of which. Is worse, smoking cigarettes or having a sweet tooth? Also, perhaps have us evaluate one part of newsletter at a time, rather than overall. I especially appreciate your book reviews and often find them through my library system.❞
We’re glad you enjoy the book reviews! We certainly enjoy reading many books to write about them for you.
As for the idea having readers evaluate one part of the newsletter at a time, rather than overall, there is a technical limitation that embedded polls are very large, data-wise, so if we were to do a poll for each section, the email would then get clipped by gmail and other email providers. However, you are always more than welcome to do as you’ve done, and include comments about what section(s) you took the most value from.
Now, onto your main question/request: as it doesn’t quite fit the usual format for our This vs That section, we’ve opted to do it as a main feature here 🙂
So, let’s get into it…
Not a zero-sum game
First, let’s be clear that for most people there is no pressing reason that this should be an either/or decision. There is nothing inherent to quitting either one that makes the other loom larger.
However, that said, if you’re (speaking generally here, and not making any presumptions about the asker) currently smoking regularly and partaking of a lot of added sugar, then you may be wondering which you should prioritize quitting first—as it is indeed generally recommended to only try to quit one thing at a time.
Indeed, we wrote previously, as a guideline for “what to do in one what order”:
Not sure where to start? We suggest this order of priorities, unless you have a major health condition that makes something else a higher priority:
- If you smoke, stop
- If you drink, reduce, or ideally stop
- Improve your diet
About that diet…
Worry less about what to exclude, and instead focus on adding more variety of fruit/veg.
See also: Level-Up Your Fiber Intake! (Without Difficulty Or Discomfort)
That said, if you’re looking for things to cut, sugar is a top candidate (and red meat is in clear second place albeit some way below)
That’s truncated from a larger list, but those were the top items.
You can read the rest in full, here: The Best Few Interventions For The Best Health: These Top 5 Things Make The Biggest Difference
The flipside of this “you can quit both” reality is that the inverse is also true: much like how having one disease makes it more likely we will get another, unhealthy habits tend to come in clusters too, as each will weaken our resolve with regard to the others. Thus, there is a sort of “comorbidity of habits” that occurs.
The good news is: the same can be said for healthy habits, so they (just like unhealthy habits) can support each other, stack, and compound. This means that while it may seem harder to quit two bad habits than one, in actual fact, the more bad habits you quit, the more it’ll become easy to quit the others. And similarly, the more good habits you adopt, the more it’ll become easy to adopt others.
See also: How To Really Pick Up (And Keep!) Those Habits
So, let’s keep that in mind, while we then look at the cases against smoking, and sugar:
The case against smoking
This is perhaps one of the easiest cases to make in the entirety of the health science world, and the only difficult part is knowing where to start, when there’s so much.
The World Health Organization leads with these key facts, on its tobacco fact sheet:
- Tobacco kills up to half of its users who don’t quit.
- Tobacco kills more than 8 million people each year, including an estimated 1.3 million non-smokers who are exposed to second-hand smoke.
- Around 80% of the world’s 1.3 billion tobacco users live in low- and middle-income countries.
- In 2020, 22.3% of the world’s population used tobacco: 36.7% of men and 7.8% of women.
- To address the tobacco epidemic, WHO Member States adopted the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC) in 2003. Currently 182 countries are Parties to this treaty.
- The WHO MPOWER measures are in line with the WHO FCTC and have been shown to save lives and reduce costs from averted healthcare expenditure.
Source: World Health Organization | Tobacco
Now, some of those are just interesting sociological considerations (well, they are of practical use to the WHO whose job it is to offer global health policy guidelines, but for us at 10almonds, with the more modest goal of helping individual people lead their best healthy lives, there’s not so much that we can do with the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, for example), but for the individual smoker, the first two are really very serious, so let’s take a closer look:
❝Tobacco kills up to half of its users who don’t quit.❞
A bold claim, backed up by at least three very large, very compelling studies:
- Mortality in relation to smoking: 50 years’ observations on male British doctors
- Tobacco smoking and all-cause mortality in a large Australian cohort study: findings from a mature epidemic with current low smoking prevalence
- Global burden of disease due to smokeless tobacco consumption in adults: an updated analysis of data from 127 countries
❝Tobacco kills more than 8 million people each year, including an estimated 1.3 million non-smokers who are exposed to second-hand smoke.❞
The WHO’s cited source for this was gatekept in a way we couldn’t access (and so probably most of our readers can’t either), but take a look at what the CDC has to say for the US alone (bearing in mind the US’s population of a little over 300,000,000, which is just 3.75% of the global population of a little over 8,000,000,000):
❝smoking causes more than 480,000 deaths [in the US] annually, with an estimated 41,000 deaths from secondhand smoke exposure, and it can reduce a person’s life expectancy by 10 years. Quitting smoking before the age of 40 reduces the risk of dying from smoking-related disease by about 90%❞
If we now remember that third bullet point, that said “Around 80% of the world’s 1.3 billion tobacco users live in low- and middle-income countries.”, then we can imagine the numbers are worse for many other countries, including large-population countries that have a lower median income than the US, such as India and Brazil.
Source for the CDC comment: Tobacco-Related Mortality
See also: AAMC | Smoking is still the leading cause of preventable death in the U.S.
We only have so much room here, but if that’s not enough…
More than 100 reasons to quit tobacco
The case against sugar
We reviewed an interesting book about this:
The Case Against Sugar – by Gary Taubes
But suffice it to say, added sugar is a big health problem; not in the same league as tobacco, but it’s big, because of how it messes with our metabolism (and when our metabolism goes wrong, everything else goes wrong):
From Apples to Bees, and High-Fructose Cs: Which Sugars Are Healthier, And Which Are Just The Same?
The epidemiology of sugar consumption and related mortality is harder to give clear stats about than smoking, because there’s not a clear yes/no indicator, and cause and effect are harder to establish when the waters are so muddied by other factors. But for comparison, we’ll note that compared to the 480,000 deaths caused by tobacco in the US annually, the total death to diabetes (which is not necessarily “caused by sugar consumption”, but there’s at least an obvious link when it comes to type 2 diabetes and refined carbohydrates) was 101,209 deaths due to diabetes in 2022:
National Center for Health Statistics | Diabetes
Now, superficially, that looks like “ok, so smoking is just under 5x more deadly”, but it’s important to remember that almost everyone eats added sugar, whereas a minority of people smoke, and those are mortality per total US population figures, not mortality per user of the substance in question. So in fact, smoking is, proportionally to how many people smoke, many times more deadly than diabetes, which currently ranks 8th in the “top causes of death” list.
Note: we recognize that you did say “having a sweet tooth” rather than “consuming added sugar”, but it’s worth noting that artificial sweeteners are not a get-out-of-illness-free card either:
Let’s get back to sugar though, as while it’s a very different beast than tobacco, it is arguably addictive also, by multiple mechanisms of addiction:
The Not-So-Sweet Science Of Sugar Addiction
That said, those mechanisms of addiction are not necessarily as strong as some others, so in the category of what’s easy or hard to quit, this is on the easier end of things—not that that means it’s easy, just, quitting many drugs is harder. In any case, it can be done:
When It’s More Than “Just” Cravings: Beat Food Addictions!
In summary
Neither are good for the health, but tobacco is orders of magnitude worse, and should be the priority to quit, unless your doctor(s) tell you otherwise because of your personal situation, and even then, try to get multiple opinions to be sure.
Take care!
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The Longevity Code – by Dr. Kris Verburgh
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Notwithstanding the subtitle claim of “secrets from the leading edge of science”, we’ll note up front that this book was published in 2015, and what was new then, isn’t now. However, what was new then is still important now, so we think the book merits attention just the same.
The book examines why certain creatures (like humans) seem programmed to grow old and die, and why others (few others, but enough to make a list) either simply do not age, or else do age but can become younger when they hit a certain point. If this is the first you’re hearing of biologically immortal creatures, we’ll mention: they can and do die, just, their cause of death is usually by being eaten. But on a cellular and structural level, they don’t age. They grow to maturity and then just stay that way until one day they get eaten (or fall to some similar external circumstance).
Tackling the question of “why do we age?” (not as a philosophical question, but rather as an engineering question) is important to tackle the critical question of “…and could we not?”, and that’s what much of this book is about.
The real reason that compared to other mammals, humans live (for example) slightly longer than bats but not as long as naked mole rats, comes down mostly to genes, which makes it sound like things are set in stone, but rather, even without outright gene-editing technologies like CRISPR, gene expression is often quite modifiable, and often modifiable not just by drugs, but also by supplements, and indeed by nutraceuticals, which means also by diet, plus diet-adjacent things like fasting.
While this is mostly an explanatory book rather than a how-to, there’s enough to make practical use of, and even a recipes section.
The style is very gripping pop-science—or at least, if you’re anything like this reviewer, you’ll find it a page-turner. While being light on citations as we go (not like some authors who will mark several citations per page, or in the extreme, for every declarative sentence made), there is a reassuring bibliography at the back.
Bottom line: if you’re interested in the “under the hood” of aging, then you will love this book.
Click here to check out The Longevity Code, and slow down the aging process to live well for longer!
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Come As You Are – by Dr. Emily Nagoski
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We’ve all heard the jokes, things like: Q: “Why is the clitoris like Antarctica?” A: “Most men know it’s there; most don’t give a damn”
But… How much do people, in general, really know about the anatomy and physiology of sexual function? Usually very little, but often without knowing how little we know.
This book looks to change that. Geared to a female audience, but almost everyone will gain useful knowledge from this.
The writing style is very easy-to-read, and there are “tl;dr” summaries for those who prefer to skim for relevant information in this rather sizeable (400 pages) tome.
Yes, that’s “what most people don’t know”. Four. Hundred. Pages.
We recommend reading it. You can thank us later!
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The Hormone Therapy That Reduces Breast Cancer Risk & More
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The Hormone Balancing Act
We’ve written before about menopausal HRT:
What You Should Have Been Told About Menopause Beforehand
…and even specifically about the considerations when it comes to breast cancer risk:
Menopausal Hormone Replacement Therapy
this really does bear reading, by the way—scroll down to the bit about breast cancer risk, because it’s not a simple increased/decreased risk; it can go either way, and which way it goes will depend on various factors including your medical history and what HRT, if any, you are taking.
Hormone Modulating Therapy
Hormone modulating therapy, henceforth HMT, is something a little different.
Instead of replacing hormones, as hormone replacement therapy does, guess what hormone modulating therapy does instead? That’s right…
MHT can modulate hormones by various means, but the one we’re going to talk about today does it by blocking estrogen receptors,
Isn’t that the opposite of what we want?
You would think so, but since for many people with an increased breast cancer risk, the presence of estrogen increases that risk, which leaves menopausal (peri- or post) people in an unfortunate situation, having to choose between increased breast cancer risk (with estrogen), or osteoporosis and increased dementia risk, amongst other problems (without).
However, the key here (in fact, that’s a very good analogy) is in how the blocker works. Hormones and their receptors are like keys and locks, meaning that the wrong-shaped hormone won’t accidentally trigger it. And when the right-shaped hormone comes along, it gets activated and the message (in this case, “do estrogenic stuff here!” gets conveyed). A blocker is sufficiently similar to fit into the receptor, without being so similar as to otherwise act as the hormone.
In this case, it has been found that HMT blocking estrogen receptors was sufficient to alleviate the breast cancer risk, while also being associated with a 7% lower risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease or related dementias, with that risk reduction being even greater for some demographics depending on race and age. Black women in the 65–74 age bracket enjoyed a 24% relative risk reduction, with white women of the same age getting an 11% relative risk reduction. Black women enjoyed the same benefits after that age, whereas white women starting it at that age did not get the same benefits. The conclusion drawn from this is that it’s good to start this at 65 if relevant and practicable, especially if white, because the protective effect is strongest when gained aged 65–69.
Here’s a pop-science article that goes into the details more deeply than we have room for here:
Hormone therapy for breast cancer linked with lower dementia risk
And here’s the paper itself; we highly recommend reading at least the abstract, because it goes into the numbers in much more detail than we reasonably can here. It’s a huge cohort study of 18,808 women aged 65 years or older, so this is highly relevant data:
Want to learn more?
If you’d like a much deeper understanding of breast cancer risk management, including in the context of hormone therapy, you might like this excellent book that we reviewed recently:
The Smart Woman’s Guide to Breast Cancer – by Dr. Jenn Simmons
Take care!
Don’t Forget…
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Learn to Age Gracefully
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Lemon Balm For Stressful Times And More
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Balm For The Mind: In More Ways Than One!
Lemon balm(Melissa officinalis) is quite unrelated to lemons, and is actually a closer relative to mint. It does have a lemony fragrance, though!
You’ll find it in a lot of relaxing/sleepy preparations, so…
What does the science say?
Relaxation
Lemon balm has indeed been found to be a potent anti-stress herb. Laboratories that need to test anything to do with stress generally create that stress in one of two main ways:
- If it’s not humans: a forced swimming test that’s a lot like waterboarding
- If it is humans: cognitive tests completed under time-pressure while multitasking
Consequently, studies that have set out to examine lemon balm’s anti-stress potential in humans, have often ended up also highlighting its potential as a cognitive enhancer, like this one in which…
❝Both active lemon balm treatments were generally associated with improvements in mood and/or cognitive performance❞
~ Dr. Anastasia Ossoukhova et al.
Read in full: Anti-Stress Effects of Lemon Balm-Containing Foods
And this one, which found…
❝The results showed that the 600-mg dose of Melissa ameliorated the negative mood effects of the DISS, with significantly increased self-ratings of calmness and reduced self-ratings of alertness.
In addition, a significant increase in the speed of mathematical processing, with no reduction in accuracy, was observed after ingestion of the 300-mg dose.❞
The appropriately named “DISS” is the Defined Intensity Stress Simulation we talked about.
Sleep
There’s a lot less research for lemon balm’s properties in this regard than for stress/anxiety, and it’s probably because sleep studies are much more expensive than stress studies.
It’s not for a lack of popular academic interest—for example, typing “Melissa officinalis” into PubMed (the vast library of studies we often cite from) autosuggests “Melissa officinalis sleep”. But alas, autosuggestions do not Randomized Controlled Trials make.
There are some, but they’re often small, old, and combined with other things, like this one:
This is interesting, because generally speaking there is little to no evidence that valerian actually helps sleep, so if this mixture worked, we might reasonably assume it was because of the lemon balm—but there’s an outside chance it could be that it only works in the presence of valerian (unlikely, but in science we must consider all possibilities).
Beyond that, we just have meta-reviews to work from, like this one that noted:
❝M. officinalis contains several phytochemicals such as phenolic acids, flavonoids, terpenoids, and many others at the basis of its pharmacological activities. Indeed, the plant can have antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, antispasmodic, antimicrobial, neuroprotective, nephroprotective, antinociceptive effects.
Given its consolidated use, M. officinalis has also been experimented with clinical settings, demonstrating interesting properties against different human diseases, such as anxiety, sleeping difficulties, palpitation, hypertension, depression, dementia, infantile colic, bruxism, metabolic problems, Alzheimer’s disease, and sexual disorders. ❞
You see why we don’t try to cover everything here, by the way!
But if you want to read this one in full, you can, at:
An Updated Review on The Properties of Melissa officinalis L.: Not Exclusively Anti-anxiety
Is it safe?
Lemon balm is generally recognized as safe, and/but please check with your doctor/pharmacist in case of any contraindications due to medicines you may be on or conditions you may have.
Want to try some?
We don’t sell it, but here for your convenience is an example product on Amazon
Want to know your other options?
You might like our previous main features:
What Teas To Drink Before Bed (By Science!)
and
Safe Effective Sleep Aids For Seniors
Enjoy!
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