Coffee, From A Blood Sugar Management Perspective
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Our favorite French biochemist (Jessie Inchauspé) is back, and this time, she’s tackling a topic near and dear to this writer’s heart: coffee ☕💕
What to consider
Depending on how you like your coffee, some or all of these may apply to you:
- Is coffee healthy? Coffee is generally healthy, reducing the risk of type 2 diabetes by improving fat burning in the liver and protecting beta cells in the pancreas.
- Does it spike blood sugars? Usually not so long as it’s black and unsweetened. Black coffee can cause small glucose spikes in some people due to stress-induced glucose release, but only if it contains caffeine.
- When is it best to drink it? Drinking coffee after breakfast, especially after a poor night’s sleep, can actually reduce glucose and insulin spikes.
- What about milk? All milks cause some glucose and insulin spikes. While oat milk is generally healthy, for blood sugar purposes unsweetened nut milks or even whole cow’s milk (but not skimmed; it needs the fat) are better options as they cause smaller spikes.
- What about sweetening? Adding sugar to coffee, especially on an empty stomach, obviously leads to large glucose spikes. Alternative sweeteners like stevia or sweet cinnamon are fine substitutes.
For more details on all of those things, plus why Kenyan coffee specifically may be the best for blood sugars, enjoy:
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Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
- The Bitter Truth About Coffee (or is it?)
- Caffeine: Cognitive Enhancer Or Brain-Wrecker?
- 10 Ways To Balance Blood Sugars
Take care!
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Plant-Based Alternatives for Meat Recipes
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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
❝How about providing a plant-based alternative when you post meat-based recipes? I appreciate how much you advocate for veggie diets and think offering an alternative with your recipes would support that❞
Glad you’re enjoying! And yes, we do usually do that. But: pardon, we missed one (the Tuna Steak with Protein Salad) because it’d be more than a simple this-for-that substitution, we didn’t already have an alternative recipe up (as with the salmon recipes such as the Chili Hot-Bedded Salmon and Thai Green Curry Salmon Burgers).
Our recipes, by the way, will tend towards being vegan, vegetarian, or at least pescatarian. This is for several reasons:
- Good science suggests the best diet for general purpose good health is one that is mostly plants, with optional moderate amounts of fermented dairy products, fish, and/or eggs.
- Your writer here (it’s me, hi) has been vegan for many years, transitioning to such via pescatarianism and ovo-lacto vegetarianism, and so the skill of cooking meat is least fresh in my memory, meaning I’d not be confident writing about that, especially as cooking meat has the gravest health consequences for messing it up.
Note on biases: notwithstanding this writer being vegan, we at 10almonds are committed to reporting the science as it stands with no agenda besides good health. Hence, there will continue to be unbiased information about animal products’ health considerations, positive as well as negative.
See also: Do We Need Animal Products To Be Healthy?
…as well as, of course, some animal-based classics from our archives including:
We Are Such Stuff As Fish Are Made Of & Eggs: All Things In Moderation?
Finishing with one for the vegans though, you might enjoy:
Which Plant Milk? We Compare 6 Of The Most Popular
Some previous articles you might enjoy meanwhile:
- Pinpointing The Usefulness Of Acupuncture
- Science-Based Alternative Pain Relief
- Peripheral Neuropathy: How To Avoid It, Manage It, Treat It
- What Does Lion’s Mane Actually Do, Anyway?
Take care!
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Samosa Spiced Surprise
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You know what’s best about samosas? It’s not actually the fried pastry; that’s just what holds it together. If you were to try eating sheets of pastry alone, it would not be much fun. But, the spiced vegetable filling? Now we’re talking! So, this recipe takes what’s best about samosas, and makes them into healthy snack-sized patties.
You will need
- Extra virgin olive oil, or coconut oil (per your preference) for cooking
- 4 medium potatoes, boiled, peeled, and mashed
- 1 medium onion, diced
- 1 cup peas
- 1 carrot, finely chopped
- ½ cup garbanzo bean flour (chickpea flour, gram flour, whatever your supermarket calls it)
- ¼ cup fresh cilantro, chopped (substitute parsley if you have the soap gene)
- ¼ bulb garlic, minced
- 1 jalapeño pepper, chopped
- 1 tbsp ground cumin
- 2 tsp garam masala
- 1 tsp ground coriander
- 1 tsp ground turmeric
- 1 tsp ground black pepper
Method
(we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)
1) Fry the onion until it is becoming soft and translucent (3–5 minutes).
2) Add the spices (the garlic, both kinds of pepper, cumin, coriander, turmeric, and the garam masala), stirring in well
3) Add the carrot and peas, stirring and cooking until just becoming soft (probably another 3–5 minutes, depending on the heat, how small you chopped the carrot, and whether the peas were frozen or fresh). Take it off the heat.
4) Mix the potato, chickpea flour, and cilantro in a bowl, and carefully add everything from the pan, mixing that in thoroughly too.
5) Shape into patties, and fry them on each side until browned and crispy.
6) Serve as part of a buffet, or perhaps as an appetizer—raita is a fine accompaniment option.
Enjoy!
Want to learn more?
For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:
Take care!
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Healthy Living in a Contaminated World – by Dr. Donald Hoernschemeyer
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There’s a lot going on here, as this book tackles very many kinds of common contaminants, from waste products and industrial chemicals (such as from fracking), pesticides that are banned in most places but not the US, smog and soot from coal and oil power, mercury and other heavy metals, dioxins, Teflon and its close relatives, phthalates, BPA, and other things again regulated out of use in many countries but not entirely in the US (which bans them only in some things, like baby bottles), drinking water issues of various kinds, and much more.
Indeed, there’s a whole chapter on the US and international regulation of toxic substances; the problem is often that on a political level, the same people who are against nebulous “chemicals” are also against environmentalist regulations that would ban them. This is mostly not a political book though, and rather is chiefly a book of chemistry (the author’s field).
It does also cover the medical maladies associated with various contaminants, while the bulk of the data is on the chemistry side of such things as “elimination times for toxic chemicals”, “amounts of pesticides in fruit and vegetables”, “antibiotics and hormones used in animal agriculture”, and so forth.
The style is dense, and/but it is clear the author has made an effort to not be too dry. Still, this is not a fun read; it’s depressing in content and the style is more suited to academia. There are appendices containing glossaries and acronym tables, but reading front-to-back, there’s a lot that’s not explained so unless you also are a PhD chemist, chances are you’ll be needing to leaf forwards and backwards a lot.
Bottom line: this book is not thrilling, but what you don’t know, can kill you.
Click here to check out Healthy Living In A Contaminated World, and improve your odds!
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Calm Your Mind with Food – by Dr. Uma Naidoo
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 the author of This Is Your Brain On Food, the psychiatrist-chef (literally, she is a Harvard-trained psychiatrist and an award-winning chef) is back with a more specific work, this time aimed squarely at what it says in the title; how to calm your mind with food.
You may be wondering: does this mean comfort-eating? And, well, not in the sense that term’s usually used. There will be eating and comfort will occur, but the process involves an abundance of nutrients, a minimization of health-deleterious ingredients, and a “for every chemical its task” approach. In other words, very much “nutraceuticals”, as our diet.
On which note: as we’ve come to expect from Dr. Naidoo, we see a lot of hard science presented simply and clearly, with neither undue sensationalization nor unnecessary jargon. We learn about the brain, the gut, relevant biology and chemistry, and build up from understanding ingredients to dietary patterns to having a whole meal plan, complete with recipes.
You may further be wondering: how much does it add that we couldn’t get from the previous book? And the answer is, not necessarily a huge amount, especially if you’re fairly comfortable taking ideas and creating your own path forwards using them. If, on the other hand, you’re a little anxious about doing that (as someone perusing this book may well be), then Dr. Naidoo will cheerfully lead you by the hand through what you need to know and do.
Bottom line: if not being compared to her previous book, this is a great standalone book with a lot of very valuable content. However, the previous book is a tough act to follow! So… All in all we’d recommend this more to people who want to indeed “calm your mind with food”, who haven’t read the other book, as this one will be more specialized for you.
Click here to check out Calm Your Mind With Food, and do just that!
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Tartar Removal At Home & How To Prevent Tartar
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Three things to bear in mind:
- Tartar is hardened plaque.
- Plaque is an infected biofilm that expands the natural thin film on teeth.
- Healthy biofilm resists plaque and tartar formation.
Therefore, the recommended approach is a multistep program:
The Complete Mouth Care System
Dr. Phillips recommends to use these five products in this order twice daily:
- Zellie’s Mints & Gum: having 6–10 grams of xylitol daily will help to loosen plaque on teeth so that the following program is more effective. Xylitol protects from mouth acidity and help to remineralize teeth.
- CloSYS Prerinse: CloSYS will prepare your teeth for brushing. This pH neutral rinse ensures that brushing teeth does not occur in an acidic mouth and therefore easily damage teeth.
- Crest Cavity Protection Regular Paste: has an active ingredient of sodium fluoride at optimal concentration (not stannous fluoride). This paste has the proper abrasion and no glycerine.
- Listerine: is an effective rinse that targets the bacteria that cause plaque build up and gingivitis with three active ingredients: eucalyptus essential oil, menthol essential oil, and thymol essential oil. As such, unlike many mouthwashes, listerine does not harm the mouth’s diversity of good bacteria or the mouth’s production of nitric oxide.
- ACT Anticavity Rinse: ACT is a very dilute but extremely effective sodium fluoride solution. It helps prevent and reverse cavities, strengthen teeth, reduce sensitivity, and leaves your breath fresh.
She advises us that by doing this twice-daily over 6 months, we can expect significant tartar reduction, and indeed, that dental appointments may reveal minimal or no need for tartar removal.
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 our own three-part series:
- Toothpastes & Mouthwashes: Which Help And Which Harm?
- Flossing Without Flossing?
- Less Common Oral Hygiene Options ← we recommend the miswak! Not only does it clean the teeth as well as or better than traditional brushing, but also it changes the composition of saliva to improve the oral microbiome, effectively turning your saliva into a biological mouthwash that kills unwanted microbes and is comfortable for the ones that should be there.
Take care!
Don’t Forget…
Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!
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Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:
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Less Common Oral Hygiene Options
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.
Less Common Alternatives For Oral Hygiene!
You almost certainly brush your teeth. You might use mouthwash. A lot of people floss for three weeks at a time, often in January.
There are a lot of options for oral hygiene; variations of the above, and many alternatives too. This is a big topic, so rather than try to squeeze it all in one, this will be a several-part series.
- The first part was: Toothpastes & Mouthwashes: Which Help And Which Harm?
- The second part was: Flossing, Better (And Easier!)
- The third (and for now at least, final) part will look at some less common alternatives.
Tooth soap
The idea here is simplicity, and brushing with as few ingredients as possible. Soap cleans your teeth the same way it cleans your (sometimes compositionally quite similar—enamel and all) dishes, without damaging them.
We’d love to link to some science here, but alas, it appears to have not yet been done—at least, we couldn’t find any!
You can make your own tooth soap if you are feeling confident, or you might prefer to buy one ready-made (here’s an example product on Amazon, with various flavor options)
Oil pulling
We are getting gradually more scientific now; there is science for this one… But the (scientific) reviews are mixed:
Wooley et al., 2020, conducted a review of extant studies, and concluded:
❝The limited evidence suggests that oil pulling with coconut oil may have a beneficial effect on improving oral health and dental hygiene❞
The “Science-Based Medicine” project was less positive in its assessment, and declared that all and any studies that found oil pulling to be effective were a matter of researcher/publication bias. We would note that SBM is a private project and is not without its own biases, but for balance, here is what they had to offer:
A more rounded view seems to be that it is a good method for cleaning your teeth if you don’t have better options available (whereby, “better options” is “almost any other method”).
One final consideration, which the above seemed not to consider, is:
If you have sensitive teeth/gums, oil-pulling is the gentlest way of cleaning them, and getting them back into sufficient order that you can comfortably use other methods.
Want to try it? You can use any food-grade oil (coconut oil or olive oil are common choices).
Chewing stick
Not just any stick—a twig of the Salvadora persica tree. This time, there’s lots of science for it, and it’s uncontroversially effective:
❝A number of scientific studies have demonstrated that the miswak (Salvadora persica) possesses antibacterial, anti-fungal, anti-viral, anti-cariogenic, and anti-plaque properties.
Several studies have also claimed that miswak has anti-oxidant, analgesic, and anti-inflammatory effects. The use of a miswak has an immediate effect on the composition of saliva.
Several clinical studies have confirmed that the mechanical and chemical cleansing efficacy of miswak chewing sticks are equal and at times greater than that of the toothbrush❞
Read in full: A review of the therapeutic effects of using miswak (Salvadora Persica) on oral health
And about the efficacy vs using a toothbrush, here’s an example:
Comparative effect of chewing sticks and toothbrushing on plaque removal and gingival health
Want to try the miswak stick? Here’s an example product on Amazon.
Enjoy!
Don’t Forget…
Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!
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