Crispy Tofu Pad Thai
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Easy to make, delicious to enjoy, and packed with phytonutrients, this dish is a great one to add to your repertoire:
You will need
- 10 oz ready-to-wok rice noodles, or 6 oz dry
- 5 oz silken tofu
- 5 oz firm or extra firm tofu, cut into small cubes
- 1 oz arrowroot (or cornstarch if you don’t have arrowroot)
- 4 scallions, sliced
- ¼ bulb garlic, finely chopped
- 1″ piece fresh ginger, grated
- 1 red chili, chopped (multiply per your heat preferences)
- 1 red bell pepper, deseeded and thinly sliced
- 4 oz bok choi, thinly sliced
- 4 oz mung bean sprouts
- 1 tbsp tamari (or other, but tamari is traditional) soy sauce
- 1 tbsp sweet chili sauce
- Juice of ½ lime
- ½ tsp MSG or 1 tsp low-sodium salt
- Avocado oil, or your preferred oil for stir-frying
- To serve: lime wedges
- Optional garnish: crushed roasted peanuts (if allergic, substitute sesame seeds; peanuts are simply traditional, that’s all)
Method
(we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)
1) Scramble the silken tofu. For guidance and also additional seasoning pointers, see our Tasty Tofu Scramble recipe, but omit the thyme.
2) Cook the noodles if necessary (i.e. if they are the dry type and need boiling, as opposed to “ready-to-wok” noodles that don’t), drain, and set aside.
4) Prepare the tofu cubes: if the tofu cubes are dry to the touch, toss them gently in a little oil to coat. If they’re wet to the touch, no need. Dust the tofu cubes with the arrowroot and MSG/salt; you can do this in a bowl, tossing gently to distribute the coating evenly.
4) Heat some oil in a wok over a high heat, and fry the tofu on each side until golden and crispy all over, and set aside.
5) Stir-fry the scallions, garlic, ginger, chili, and bell pepper for about 2 minutes.
6) Add the bean sprouts and bok choi, and keep stir-frying for another 2 minutes.
7) Add everything that’s not already in the pan except the lime wedges and peanuts (i.e., add the things you set aside, plus the remaining as-yet-untouched ingredients) and stir-fry for a further 2 minutes.
8) Serve hot, garnished with the crushed peanuts if using, and with the lime wedges on the side:
Enjoy!
Want to learn more?
For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:
- Sprout Your Seeds, Grains, Beans, Etc
- Which Bell Peppers To Pick? A Spectrum Of Specialties
- Our Top 5 Spices: How Much Is Enough For Benefits?
Take care!
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Resveratrol & Healthy Aging
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Resveratrol & Healthy Aging
Resveratrol is the compound found in red grapes, and thus in red wine, that have resulted in red wine being sometimes touted as a heart-healthy drink.
However, at the levels contained in red wine, you’d need to drink 100–1000 glasses of wine per day (depending on the wine) to get the dose of resveratrol that was associated with heart health benefits in mouse studies.
Which also means: if you are not a mouse, you might need to drink even more than that!
Further reading: can we drink to good health?
Resveratrol supplementation
Happily, resveratrol supplements exist. But what does resveratrol do?
It lowers blood pressure:
Effect of resveratrol on blood pressure: a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials
It improves blood lipid levels:
It improves insulin sensitivity:
It has neuroprotective effects too:
Resveratrol promotes clearance of Alzheimer’s disease amyloid-beta peptides
Is it safe?
For most people, it is generally recognized as safe. However, if you are on blood-thinners or otherwise have a bleeding disorder, you might want to skip it:
Antiplatelet activity of synthetic and natural resveratrol in red wine
You also might want to check with your pharmacist/doctor, if you’re on blood pressure meds, anxiety meds, or immunosuppressants, as it can increase the amount of these drugs that will then stay in your system:
Resveratrol modulates drug- and carcinogen-metabolizing enzymes in a healthy volunteer study
And as ever, of course, if unsure just check with your pharmacist/doctor, to be on the safe side.
Where to get it?
We don’t sell it, but here’s an example product on Amazon for your convenience
Enjoy!
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How To Actually Get Abs (10 Annoying Tips That Work!)
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Cori Lefkowitz, of “Strong At Any Age”, advises…
The method
It may not be fun, but here’s what she finds works:
- Be boring: stick to a simple, repetitive diet to track progress easily, and make hitting macros simpler.
- Cut back on protein bars: processed protein bars are calorie-dense but not filling (due to their small volume), so limit them, especially when trying to get lean.
- Stop daily fluctuations: she advises to be precise with macros and calories daily, not just weekly, to see consistent results.
- Focus on fiber: aim for 25–30g of fiber daily to improve gut health, reduce cravings, and maintain health while cutting fat.
- Get 30–40g of protein per meal: ensure each meal has enough protein to fuel muscle growth and support overall body function.
- Prioritize carbs around workouts: eat carbs before and after training to fuel performance, aid muscle repair, and maintain lean mass.
- Take diet breaks: incorporate 1–2 week maintenance phases to prevent metabolic adaptation, maintain muscle, and thus stay consistent in the long-term.
- Be careful with fat burners & preworkout: these can harm sleep, recovery, and long-term fat loss; opt for natural dietary energy sources instead.
- Don’t set-and-forget: regularly assess and adjust your diet and macros as your body and lifestyle change.
- “Suck it up, buttercup”: fat loss requires persistence, discipline, and pushing through tough moments when you feel like quitting.
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:
Is A Visible Six-Pack Obtainable Regardless Of Genetic Predisposition?
Take care!
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Healthy Hormones And How To Hack Them
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Healthy Hormones And How To Hack Them!
Hormones are vital for far more than they tend to get credit for. Even the hormones that people think of first—testosterone and estrogen—do a lot more than just build/maintain sexual characteristics and sexual function. Without them, we’d lack energy, we’d be depressed, and we’d soon miss the general smooth-running of our bodies that we take for granted.
And that’s without getting to the many less-talked-about hormones that play a secondary sexual role or are in the same general system…
How are your prolactin levels, for example?
Unless you’re ill, taking certain medications, recently gave birth, or picked a really interesting time to read this newsletter, they’re probably normal, by the way.
But, prolactin can explain “la petite mort”, the downturn in energy and the somewhat depressed mood that many men experience after orgasm.
Otherwise, if you have too much prolactin in general, you will be sleepy and depressed.
Prolactin’s primary role? In women, it stimulates milk production when needed. In men, it plays a role in regulating mood and metabolism.
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Which gut drugs might end up in a lawsuit? Are there really links with cancer and kidney disease? Should I stop taking them?
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Common medicines used to treat conditions including heartburn, reflux, indigestion and stomach ulcers may be the subject of a class action lawsuit in Australia.
Lawyers are exploring whether long-term use of these over-the-counter and prescription drugs are linked to stomach cancer or kidney disease.
The potential class action follows the settlement of a related multi-million dollar lawsuit in the United States. Last year, international pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca settled for US$425 million (A$637 million) after patients made the case that two of its drugs caused significant and potentially life-threatening side effects.
Specifically, patients claimed the company’s drugs Nexium (esomeprazole) and Prilosec (omeprazole) increased the risk of kidney damage.
Doucefleur/Shutterstock Which drugs are involved in Australia?
The class of drugs we’re talking about are “proton pump inhibitors” (sometimes called PPIs). In the case of the Australian potential class action, lawyers are investigating:
- Nexium (esomeprazole)
- Losec, Asimax (omeprazole)
- Somac (pantoprazole)
- Pariet (rabeprazole)
- Zoton (lansoprazole).
Depending on their strength and quantity, these medicines are available over-the-counter in pharmacies or by prescription.
They have been available in Australia for more than 20 years and are in the top ten medicines dispensed through the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.
They are used to treat conditions exacerbated by stomach acid. These include heartburn, gastric reflux and indigestion. They work by blocking the protein responsible for pumping acid into the stomach.
These drugs are also prescribed with antibiotics to treat the bacterium Helicobacter pylori, which causes stomach ulcers and stomach cancer.
This class of drugs is also used with antibiotics to treat Helicobacter pylori infections. nobeastsofierce/Shutterstock What do we know about the risks?
Appropriate use of proton pump inhibitors plays an important role in treating several serious digestive problems. Like all medicines, there are risks associated with their use depending on how much and how long they are used.
When proton pump inhibitors are used appropriately for the short-term treatment of stomach problems, they are generally well tolerated, safe and effective.
Their risks are mostly associated with long-term use (using them for more than a year) due to the negative effects from having reduced levels of stomach acid. In elderly people, these include an increased risk of gut and respiratory tract infections, nutrient deficiencies and fractures. Long-term use of these drugs in elderly people has also been associated with an increased risk of dementia.
In children, there is an increased risk of serious infection associated with using these drugs, regardless of how long they are used.
How about the cancer and kidney risk?
Currently, the Australian consumer medicine information sheets that come with the medicines, like this one for esomeprazole, do not list stomach cancer or kidney injury as a risk associated with using proton pump inhibitors.
So what does the evidence say about the risk?
Over the past few years, there have been large studies based on observing people in the general population who have used proton pump inhibitors. These studies have found people who take them are almost two times more likely to develop stomach cancer and 1.7 times more likely to develop chronic kidney disease when compared with people who are not taking them.
In particular, these studies report that users of the drugs lansoprazole and pantoprazole have about a three to four times higher risk than non-users of developing chronic kidney disease.
While these observational studies show a link between using the drugs and these outcomes, we cannot say from this evidence that one causes the other.
Researchers have not yet shown these drugs cause kidney disease. crystal light/Shutterstock What can I do if I’m worried?
Several digestive conditions, especially reflux and heartburn, may benefit from simple dietary and lifestyle changes. But the overall evidence for these is not strong and how well they work varies between individuals.
But it may help to avoid large meals within two to three hours before bed, and reduce your intake of fatty food, alcohol and coffee. Eating slowly and getting your weight down if you are overweight may also help your symptoms.
There are also medications other than proton pump inhibitors that can be used for heartburn, reflux and stomach ulcers.
These include over-the-counter antacids (such as Gaviscon and Mylanta), which work by neutralising the acidic environment of the stomach.
Alternatives for prescription drugs include nizatidine and famotidine. These work by blocking histamine receptors in the stomach, which decreases stomach acid production.
If you are concerned about your use of proton pump inhibitors it is important to speak with your doctor or pharmacist before you stop using them. That’s because when you have been using them for a while, stopping them may result in increased or “rebound” acid production.
Nial Wheate, Professor and Director – Academic Excellence, Macquarie University; Joanna Harnett, Senior Lecturer – Sydney Pharmacy School, Faculty of Medicine and Health, University of Sydney, and Wai-Jo Jocelin Chan, Pharmacist and Associate Lecturer, University of Sydney
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Habits of a Happy Brain – by Dr. Loretta Graziano Breuning
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There are lots of books on “happy chemicals” and “how to retrain your brain”, so what makes this one different?
Firstly, it focuses on four “happy chemicals”, not just one:
- Serotonin
- Dopamine
- Oxytocin
- Endorphins
It also looks at the role of cortisol, and how it caps off each of those just a little bit, to keep us just a little malcontent.
Behavioral psychology tends to focus most on dopamine, while prescription pharmaceuticals for happiness (i.e., most antidepressants) tend to focus on serotonin. Here, Dr. Breuning helps us understand the complex interplay of all of the aforementioned chemicals.
She also clears up many misconceptions, since a lot of people misattribute the functions of each of these.
Common examples include “I’m doing this for the serotonin!” when the activity is dopaminergic not serotoninergic, or considering dopamine “the love molecule” when oxytocin, or even something else like phenylethylamine would be more appropriate.
The above may seem like academic quibbles and not something of practical use, but if we want to biohack our brains, we need to do better than the equivalent of a chef who doesn’t know the difference between salt and sugar.
Where things are of less practical use, she tends to skip over or at least streamline them. For example, she doesn’t really discuss the role of post-dopamine prolactin in men—but the discussion of post-happiness cortisol covers the same ground anyway, for practical purposes.
Dr. Breuning also looks at where our evolved neurochemical responses go wrong, and lays out guidelines for such challenges as overcoming addiction, or embracing delayed gratification.
Bottom line: this book is a great user-manual for the brain. If you’d like to be happier and more effective with fewer bad habits, this is the book for you.
Click here to check out Habits of a Happy Brain, and get biohacking yours!
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Berberine For Metabolic Health
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Is Berberine Nature’s Ozempic/Wegovy?
Berberine is a compound found in many plants. Of which, some of them are variations of the barberry, hence the name.
It’s been popular this past couple of years, mostly for weight loss. In and of itself, something being good for weight loss doesn’t mean it’s good for the health (just ask diarrhoea, or cancer).
Happily, berberine’s mechanisms of action appear to be good for metabolic health, including:
- Reduced fasting blood sugar levels
- Improved insulin sensitivity
- Reduced LDL and triglycerides
- Increased HDL levels
So, what does the science say?
It’s (mostly!) not nature’s Wegovy/Ozempic
It’s had that title in a number of sensationalist headlines (and a current TikTok trend, apparently), but while both berberine and the popular weight-loss drugs Wegovy/Ozempic act in part on insulin metabolism, they mostly do so by completely different mechanisms.
Wegovy and Ozempic are GLP-1 agonists, which mean they augment the action of glucagon-like-peptide 1, which increases insulin release, decreases glucagon release, and promotes a more lasting feeling of fullness.
Berberine works mostly by other means, not all of which are understood. But, we know that it activates AMP-activated protein kinase, and on the flipside, inhibits proprotein convertase subtilisin/kexin type 9.
In less arcane words: it boosts some enzymes and inhibits others.
Each of these boosts/inhibitions has a positive effect on metabolic health.
However, it does also have a slight GLP-1 agonist effect too! Bacteria in the gut can decompose and metabolize berberine into dihydroberberine, thus preventing the absorption of disaccharides in the intestinal tract, and increasing GLP-1 levels.
See: Effects of Berberine on the Gastrointestinal Microbiota
Does it work for weight loss?
Yes, simply put. And if we’re going to put it head-to-head with Wegovy/Ozempic, it works about half as well. Which sounds like a criticism, but for a substance that’s a lot safer (and cheaper, and easier—if we like capsules over injections) and has fewer side effects.
- Weight Loss Outcomes Associated With Semaglutide Treatment for Patients With Overweight or Obesity ← Wegovy and Ozempic are both brand names of semaglutide
- The effect of berberine supplementation on obesity parameters: A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials ← a good recent research review giving clear data on many factors
- Lipid-lowering effect of berberine in human subjects and rats ← this is an older study, 2012, but it gives 3-month weight loss percentages rather than discrete values in the abstract, so it’s easier to compare to the semaglutide study without grabbing a calculator
❝But more interestingly, the treatment significantly reduced blood lipid levels (23% decrease of triglyceride and 12.2% decrease of cholesterol levels) in human subjects.
However, there was interestingly, an increase in calcitriol levels seen in all human subjects following berberine treatment (mean 59.5% increase)
Collectively, this study demonstrates that berberine is a potent lipid-lowering compound with a moderate weight loss effect, and may have a possible potential role in osteoporosis treatment/prevention.❞
(click through to read in full)
Is it safe?
It appears to be, with one special caveat: remember that paper about the effects of berberine on the gastrointestinal microbiota? It also has some antimicrobial effects, so you could do harm there if not careful. It’s recommended to give it a break every couple of months, to be sure of allowing your gut microbiota to not get too depleted.
Also, as with anything you might take that’s new, always consult your doctor/pharmacist in case of contraindications based on medications you are taking.
Where can I get it?
As ever, we don’t sell it, but here’s an example product on Amazon, for your convenience.
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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