Why Curcumin (Turmeric) Is Worth Its Weight In Gold

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.

Curcumin (Turmeric) is worth its weight in gold

Not financially! But, this inexpensive golden spice has an impressive list of well-studied health benefits, for something so freely available in any supermarket, and there’s a reason it gets a place in “Dr. Greger’s Daily Dozen”, right up there with things like “leafy greens” and “berries” when it comes to superfoods.

Let’s do a quick run-down:

In short, it’s—like we said—worth its weight in gold.

Quick advice though before we move on…

If you take curcumin with black pepper, it allows your body to use the curcumin around 2,000% better. This goes whether you’re cooking with both, or take them as a supplement (they’re commonly sold as a combo-capsule for this reason).

Want to get some?

Click Here To Check It Out On Amazon

Don’t Forget…

Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!

Recommended

  • Resveratrol & Healthy Aging
  • The Worry Trick – by Dr. David Carbonell
    Stop fighting anxiety and start embracing it. Dr. Carbonell’s book offers practical techniques to overcome worry and reclaim your time and energy.

Learn to Age Gracefully

Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:

  • The Cough Doctor

    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.

    The Cough Doctor

    This is Dr. Peter Small, who worked in epidemiology since the beginning of HIV epidemic. He became a pioneer in the field of molecular epidemiology. As such, his work was a guiding beacon for the public health response to the resurgence of tuberculosis. He’s travelled the world spending years in various institutions studying all manner of respiratory illnesses…. These have ranged from tuberculosis to pneumonia to lung cancer and (back to epidemiology) Covid-19.

    He’s now the Chief Medical Officer at…

    Hyfe

    Hyfe, a medical AI company, was founded in 2020. Its objective: to build acoustic tools for respiratory diagnostics and monitoring.

    In other words: it records coughs and collects data about coughing.

    ❝It’s ironic how much people focus on counting steps while ignoring cough, which is far more consequential. Hyfe is a science-driven company with the technology to make cough count. Particularly now, with increased awareness of cough and the rapid growth of digital health driven by Covid-19, this technology can improve the lives of patients, the care provided by doctors, and the efficiency of health systems.❞

    ~ Dr. Peter Small, CMO, Hyfe

    How does it do it?

    Hyfe’s AI monitors the number of times a person coughs and the sound of the cough through any smartphone or other smart device.

    This data collected over time provides increasingly more reliable information than a single visit to the doctor! By constantly listening and analyzing, it can detect patterns that might otherwise go unnoticed.

    How big is this “big data” effort?

    Hyfe maintains the largest cough dataset in the world. This means it can compare the sound of a patient’s cough with more than 400 million cough-like sounds from 83 countries across all continents.

    The human brain doesn’t handle big numbers well. So, just to illustrate: if the average cough is 1 second long, that means it’d take more than 12 years to listen to them all.

    Hyfe, meanwhile, can:

    • listen to many things simultaneously
    • index them all against user and location,
    • use its ever-growing neural net to detect and illustrate patterns.

    It’s so attentive, that it can learn to distinguish between different people’s coughs in the same household.

    ❝Companies like Google Health see even basic information such as getting an accurate count of the number of times a person coughs a day as a useful resource, and part of a larger need to collect and chronicle more health information to refine the way doctors diagnose disease and manage treatments in the future.❞

    ~ Time Magazine

    What are the public health implications?

    The most obvious application is to note when there’s a spike in coughing, and see how such spikes grow and spread (if they do), to inform of contagion risks.

    Another is to cross-reference it with data about local environmental allergens. Knowing how things like pollution and even pollen affect individuals differently could be helpful in identifying (and managing) chronic conditions like asthma.

    What are the private health implications?

    ❝It’s going to transform the whole clinical approach for this common and chronic symptom. Patients will come in, have the data on how much they are coughing, and the physician can suggest a treatment based on that information to see if it makes the coughs better❞

    ~ Dr. Peter Small

    Dr. Small’s colleague Dr. Cai, speaking for Google Health on this project, sees even more utility for diagnostics:

    ❝When I was in medical school, never ever did they teach us that we could listen to somebody cough and identify whether that person has TB (tuberculosis), COPD, or a tumor. But I keep seeing more and more studies of people coughing into a microphone, and an algorithm can detect whether somebody has TB with 95% specificity and sensitivity, or if someone has pneumonia or an exacerbation of COPD❞

    ~ Dr. Lawrence Cai

    And the privacy implications?

    Perhaps you don’t quite fancy the idea of not being able to cough without Google knowing about it. Hyfe’s software is currently opt-in, but…

    If you cough near someone else’s Hyfe app, their app will recognize you’re not the app’s user, and start building a profile for you. Of course, that won’t be linked to your name, email address, or other IDs, as it would if you were the app’s user.

    Hyfe will ask to connect to your social media, to collect more information about you and your friends.

    Whether you’d like to try this or perhaps you’re just curious to learn more about this fascinating project, you can check out:

    Share This Post

  • 7 Signs of Undiagnosed Autism in Adults

    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.

    When it comes to adults and autism, there are two kinds of person in the popular view: those who resemble the Rain Man, and those who are making it up. But, it’s not so, as Paul Micallef explains:

    The signs

    We’ll not keep them a mystery; they are:

    1. Social interaction difficulties: such a person may struggle with understanding social cues, leading to awkwardness, isolation, or appearing eccentric.
    2. Need for structure and routine: either highly structured or disorganized, both of which stem from executive function challenges. The former, of course, is a coping mechanism, while the latter is the absence of same.
    3. Sensory sensitivities: can include sensitivities or insensitivities to light, sound, temperature, smells, tastes, and so forth.
    4. Spiky skillset: extreme strengths in certain areas, coupled with significant difficulties in others, leading to uneven abilities. May be able to dismantle and rebuild a PC, while not knowing how to arrange an Über.
    5. Emotional regulation issues: experiences of meltdowns, shutdowns, or withdrawal as coping mechanisms when overwhelmed. Not that this is “or”, not necessarily “and”. The latter goes especially unnoticed as an emotional regulation issue, because for everyone else, it’s something that’s not there to see.
    6. Unusual associations: making mental connections or associations that seem random or uncommon compared to others. The mind went to 17 places quickly and while everyone else got from idea A to idea B, this person is already at idea Q.
    7. Being “just different”: a general sense of being the odd one out, standing out in subtle or distinct ways. This is rather a catch-all, but if there’s someone who fits this, there’s a good chance, the other things apply too.

    For more on all of these, whether pertaining to yourself or a loved one (or both!), enjoy:

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

    Want to learn more?

    You might also like to read:

    Take care!

    Share This Post

  • Heart Smarter for Women – by Dr. Jennifer Mieres

    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.

    Dr. Mieres takes us through understanding our own heart disease risks as individuals rather than as averages. As the title suggests, she does assume a female readership, so if you are a man and have no female loved ones, this might not be the book for you. But aside from that, she walks us through examining risk in the context of age, other health conditions, lifestyle factors, and so forth—including not turning a blind eye to factors that might intersect, such as for example if a physical condition reduces how much we can exercise, or if there’s some reason we can’t follow the usual gold standard of heart-healthy diet.

    On which note, she does offer dietary advice, including information around recipes, meal-planning, and what things to always have in stock, as well as what things matter the most when it comes to what and how we eat.

    It’s not all lifestyle medicine though; Dr. Mieres gives due attention to many of the medications available for heart health issues—and the pros and cons of these.

    The style of the book is very simple and readable pop-science, without undue jargon, and with a generous glossary. As with many books of this genre, it does rely on (presumably apocryphal) anecdotes, though an interesting choice for this book is that it keeps a standing cast of four recurring characters, each to represent a set of circumstances and illustrate how certain things can go differently for different people, with different things then being needed and/or possible. Hopefully, any given reader will find themself represented at least moderately well somewhere in or between these four characters.

    Bottom line: this is a very informative and accessible book, that demystifies a lot of common confusions around heart health.

    Click here to check out Heart Smarter For Women, and take control of your health!

    Share This Post

Related Posts

  • Resveratrol & Healthy Aging
  • Beyond Supplements: The Real Immune-Boosters!

    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.

    The Real Immune-Boosters

    What comes to your mind when we say “immune support”? Vitamin C and maybe zinc? Those have their place, but there are things we can do that are a lot more important!

    It’s just, these things are not talked about as much, because stores can’t sell them to you

    Sleep

    One of the biggest difference-makers. Get good sleep! Getting at least 7 hours decent sleep (not lying in bed, not counting interruptions to sleep as part of the sleep duration) can improve your immune system by three or four times.

    Put another way, people are 3–4 times more likely to get sick if they get less sleep than that on average.

    Check it out: Behaviorally Assessed Sleep and Susceptibility to the Common Cold

    Eat an anti-inflammatory diet

    In short, for most of us this means lots of whole plant foods (lots of fiber), and limited sugar, flour, alcohol.

    For more details, you can see our main feature on this: Keep Inflammation At Bay!

    You may wonder why eating to reduce inflammation (inflammation is a form of immune response) will help improve immune response. Put it this way:

    If your town’s fire service is called out eleventy-two times per day to deal with things that are not, in fact, fires, then when there is a fire, they will be already exhausted, and will not do their job so well.

    Look after your gut microbiota

    Additionally, healthy gut microbiota (fostered by the same diet we just described) help keep your body pathogen-free, by avoiding “leaky gut syndrome” that occurs when, for example, C. albicans (you do not want this in your gut, and it thrives on the things we just told you to avoid) puts its roots through your intestinal walls, making holes in them. And through those holes? You definitely do not want bacteria from your intestines going into the rest of your body.

    See also: Gut Health 101

    Actually get that moderate exercise

    There’s definitely a sweet-spot here, because too much exercise will also exhaust you and deplete your body’s resources. However, the famous “150 minutes per week” (so, a little over 20 minutes per day, or 25 minutes per day with one day off) will make a big difference.

    See: Exercise and the Regulation of Immune Functions

    Manage your stress levels (good and bad!)

    This one swings both ways:

    • Acute stress (like a cold shower) is good for immune response. Think of it like a fire drill for your body.
    • Chronic stress (“the general everything” persistently stressful in life) is bad for immune response. This is the fire drill that never ends. Your body’s going to know what to do really well, but it’s going to be exhausted already by the time an actual threat hits.

    Read more: Effects of Stress on Immune Function: the Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful

    Supplement, yes.

    These are far less critical than the above things, but are also helpful. Good things to take include:

    Enjoy, and stay well!

    Don’t Forget…

    Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!

    Learn to Age Gracefully

    Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:

  • Falling: Is It Due To Age Or Health Issues?

    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 😎

    ❝What are the signs that a senior is falling due to health issues rather than just aging?❞

    Superficial answer: having an ear infection can result in a loss of balance, and is not particularly tied to age as a risk factor

    More useful answer: first, let’s consider these two true statements:

    • The risks of falling (both the probability and the severity of consequences) increase with age
    • Health issues (in general) tend to increase with age

    With this in mind, it’s difficult to disconnect the two, as neither exist in a vacuum, and each is strongly associated with the other.

    So the question is easier to answer by first flipping it, to ask:

    ❝What are the health issues that typically increase with age, that increase the chances of falling?❞

    A non-exhaustive list includes:

    • Loss of strength due to sarcopenia (reduced muscle mass)
    • Loss of mobility due to increased stiffness (many causes, most of which worsen with age)
    • Loss of risk-awareness due to diminished senses (for example, not seeing an obstacle until too late)
    • Loss of risk-awareness due to reduced mental focus (cognitive decline producing absent-mindedness)

    Note that in the last example there, and to a lesser extent the third one, reminds us that falls also often do not happen in a vacuum. There is (despite how it may sometimes feel!) no actual change in our physical relationship with gravity as we get older; most falls are about falling over things, even if it’s just one’s own feet:

    The 4 Bad Habits That Cause The Most Falls While Walking

    Disclaimer: sometimes a person may just fall down for no external reason. An example of why this may happen is if a person’s joint (for example an ankle or a knee) has a particular weakness that means it’ll occasionally just buckle and collapse under one’s own weight. This doesn’t even have to be a lot of weight! The weakness could be due to an old injury, or Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (with its characteristic joint hypermobility symptoms), or something else entirely.

    Now, notice how:

    • all of these things can happen at any age
    • all of these things are more likely to happen the older we get
    • none of these things have to happen at any age

    That last one’s important to remember! Aging is often viewed as an implacable Behemoth, but the truth is that it is many-faceted and every single one of those facets can be countered, to a greater or lesser degree.

    Think of a room full of 80-year-olds, and now imagine that…

    • One has the hearing of a 20-year-old
    • One has the eyesight of a 20-year-old
    • One has the sharp quick mind of a 20-year-old
    • One has the cardiovascular fitness of a 20-year-old

    …etc. Now, none of those things in isolation is unthinkable, so remember, there is no magic law of the universe saying we can’t have each of them:

    Age & Aging: What Can (And Can’t) We Do About It?

    Which means: that goes for the things that increase the risk of falling, too. In other words, we can combat sarcopenia with protein and resistance training, maintain our mobility, look after our sensory organs as best we can, nourish our brain and keep it sharp, etc etc etc:

    Train For The Event Of Your Life! (Mobility As A Long-Term “Athletic” Goal For Personal Safety)

    Which doesn’t mean: that we will necessarily succeed in all areas. Your writer here, broadly in excellent health, and whose lower body is still a veritable powerhouse in athletic terms, has a right ankle and left knee that will sometimes just buckle (yay, the aforementioned hypermobility).

    So, it becomes a priority to pre-empt the consequences of that, for example:

    • being able to fall with minimal impact (this is a matter of knowing how, and can be learned from “soft” martial arts such as aikido), and
    • ensuring the skeleton can take a knock if necessary (keeping a good balance of vitamins, minerals, protein, etc; keeping an eye on bone density).

    See also:

    Fall Special ← appropriate for the coming season, but it’s about avoiding falling, and reducing the damage of falling if one does fall, including some exercises to try at home.

    Take care!

    Don’t Forget…

    Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!

    Learn to Age Gracefully

    Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:

  • Chair Stretch Workout Guide

    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

    ❝The 3 most important exercises don’t work if you can’t get on the floor. I’m 78, and have knee replacements. What about 3 best chair yoga stretches? Love your articles!❞

    Here are six!

    Don’t Forget…

    Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!

    Learn to Age Gracefully

    Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails: