Dates vs Raisins – Which is Healthier?
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.
Our Verdict
When comparing dates to raisins, we picked the dates.
Why?
There are benefits for each fruit, but we say dates come out on top. See what you think:
In terms of macros, while they’re both dried fruits, dates contain more water (unless you leave them sitting open for a while), which will tend to mathematically lower the relative percentages of other components because they’re being held against water weight too. However, even though this is the case (i.e. dates are being mathematically disadvantaged), dates contain more than twice the fiber that raisins do (8g/100g compared to raisins’ 3.7g/100g).
While we’re talking macros, dates are also lower in total carbs, as well as obviously net carbs, and have a much lower glycemic index than raisins (dates have a glycemic index of 42, considered low, while raisins have a glycemic index of 64, considered medium; their respective glycemic loads are even more telling: 13 for raisins and just 2 for dates!).
About those carbs… For dates, it’s an approximately equal mix of sucrose, glucose, and fructose, while for raisins it’s 49% glucose and 49% fructose. Because sucrose is the only disaccharide here, this (as well as the fiber difference) is one of the reasons for the different glycemic indices and glycemic loads, since glucose and fructose are more quickly absorbed.
That’s more than we usually write about macros, but in this case, both fruits are ones especially often hit with the “aren’t they full of sugar though?” question, so it was important to cover the critical distinctions between the two, because they really are very different.
Summary of macros: dates win easily in every aspect we looked at
In the category of vitamins, raisins get a tally in their favor. Raisins are higher in vitamins B1, B2, C, E, K, and choline, while dates are higher in vitamins A, B3, B5, and B9, giving raisins a 6:4 lead here. In dates’ defense, the difference in vitamin K is marginal, and it’d make it a 5:4 lead if we considered that within the margin of error (because all these figures are of course based on averages), and the vitamins that dates are higher in, the margins are much wider indeed, meaning that both fruits have approximately the same overall levels of vitamins when looked at in total, but still, we’ll call this category a nominal win for raisins.
When it comes to minerals, dates have more magnesium, selenium, and zinc, while raisins have more copper, iron, phosphorus, and potassium. Nominally that’s a 4:3 lead for raisins, but if we consider that raisins also contain more sodium, it’s more like a tie here. If we have to pick one though, this is a very slight win for raisins.
Adding up the sections, we have one huge win for dates (macros) with two very marginal wins for raisins—hence, we say that dates win out.
Still, of course enjoy both; diversity is good for the health.
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
Which Sugars Are Healthier, And Which Are Just The Same?
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:
-
A Planet of Viruses – by Carl Zimmer
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.
We’ve reviewed numerous books on the immune system before, and this one’s mostly not about that.
Instead, this one focuses on the viruses themselves, and the part they play in our world, for good and for ill. Popular awareness tends to focus on the ill, of course.
But, there’s a lot that viruses do for us too, including:
- Weak/harmless viruses that keep our immune systems on their toes and ready
- Bacteriophage viruses that kill and consume pathogens that, left unchecked, would do the same to us
- Endogenous retroviruses that have become symbiotic with the human organism, without which our species would quickly go extinct
He also talks about biological warfare, and how we cannot bury our heads in the sand by avoiding research on those grounds, because someone will always do it anyway, so (as the motto of the immune system itself might say), best to be prepared.
The author is a science journalist, by the way, and has no PhD, but does have a flock of Fellowships and assorted scientific awards and honors, so he appears to be doing good work so far as the scientific community is concerned.
Bottom line: if you’d like to know more about viruses than “they’re very small and can cause harm”, then this book will open a whole new world.
Click here to check out A Planet of Viruses, and upgrade your knowledge!
Share This Post
-
Heart Rate Zones, Oxalates, & More
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
❝I think the heart may be an issue for lots of us. I know it is for me due to AFib. When I’m in my training zone like on a treadmill, I’m usually around 110 to 120. But there are occasionally times when I’m at 140 or 150. How dangerous is that? If I use that formula of 180 minus age, thats 103. I get nothing from that. My resting heart rate is in the 50 to 60 range.❞
First, for safety, let us draw attention to our medical disclaimer at the bottom of each email, and also specifically note that we are not cardiologists here, let alone your cardiologist. There’s a lot we can’t know or advise about. However, as general rules of thumb:
For people without serious health conditions, it is considered good and healthful for one’s heart rate to double (from its resting rate) during exercise, with even more than 2.5x resting rate being nothing more than a good cardio workout.
As for “180 minus age” (presuming you mean: to calculate the safe maximum heart rate), more common (and used by the American Heart Association) is 220 minus age. In your case, that’d give 143.
Having atrial fibrillation may change this however, and we can’t offer medical advice.
We can point to this AHA “AFib Resources For Patients and Professionals”, including this handy FAQ sheet which says:
“Am I able to exercise?” / “Yes, as long as you’re cleared by your doctor, you can perform normal activities of daily living that you can tolerate” (accompanied by a little graphic of a person using an exercise bike)
You personally probably know this already, of course, but it’s quite an extensive collection of resources, so we thought we’d include it.
It’s certainly a good idea for everyone to be aware of their healthy heart rate ranges, regardless of having a known heart condition or not, though!
American Heart Association: Target Heart Rates Chart
❝I would like to see some articles on osteoporosis❞
You might enjoy this mythbusting main feature we did a few weeks ago!
The Bare-Bones Truth About Osteoporosis
❝Interesting, but… Did you know spinach is high in oxylates? Some people are sensitive and can cause increased inflammation, joint pain or even kidney stones. Moderation is key. My sister and I like to eat healthy but found out by experience that too much spinach salad caused us joint and other aches.❞
It’s certainly good to be mindful of such things! For most people, a daily serving of spinach shouldn’t cause ill effects, and certainly there are other greens to eat.
We wondered whether there was a way to reduce the oxalate content, and we found:
How to Reduce Oxalic Acid in Spinach: Neutralizing Oxalates
…which led us this product on Amazon:
Nephure Oxalate Reducing Enzyme, Low Oxalate Diet Support
We wondered what “nephure” was, and whether it could be trusted, and came across this “Supplement Police” article about it:
Nephure Review – Oxalate Reducing Enzyme Powder Health Benefits?
…which honestly, seems to have been written as a paid advertisement. But! It did reference a study, which we were able to look up, and find:
In vitro and in vivo safety evaluation of Nephure™
…which seems to indicate that it was safe (for rats) in all the ways that they checked. They did not, however, check whether it actually reduced oxalate content in spinach or any other food.
The authors did declare a conflict of interest, in that they had a financial relationship with the sponsor of the study, Captozyme Inc.
All in all, it may be better to just have kale instead of spinach:
- 20 Foods High in Oxalates to Limit if You Have Kidney Stones
- The Kidney Dietician: The Best Low Oxalate Greens
We turn the tables and ask you a question!
We’ll then talk about this tomorrow:
Share This Post
-
How To Leverage Placebo Effect For Yourself
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.
Placebo Effect: Making Things Work Since… Well, A Very Long Time Ago
The placebo effect is a well-known, well-evidenced factor that is very relevant when it comes to the testing and implementation of medical treatments:
NIH | National Center for Biotechnology Information | Placebo Effect
Some things that make placebo effect stronger include:
- Larger pills instead of small ones: because there’s got to be more going on in there, right?
- Thematically-colored pills: e.g. red for stimulant effects, blue for relaxing effects
- Things that seem expensive: e.g. a well-made large heavy machine, over a cheap-looking flimsy plastic device. Similarly, medication from a small glass jar with a childproof lock, rather than popped out from a cheap blister-pack.
- Things that seem rational: if there’s an explanation for how it works that you understand and find rational, or at least you believe you understand and find rational ← this works in advertising, too; if there’s a “because”, it lands better almost regardless of what follows the word “because”
- Things delivered confidently by a professional: this is similar to the “argument from authority” fallacy (whereby a proposed authority will be more likely trusted, even if this is not their area of expertise at all, e.g. celebrity endorsements), but in the case of placebo trials, this often looks like a well-dressed middle-aged or older man with an expensive haircut calling for a young confident-looking aide in a lab coat to administer the medicine, and is received better than a slightly frazzled academic saying “and, uh, this one’s yours” while handing you a pill.
- Things with ritual attached: this can be related to the above (the more pomp and circumstance is given to the administration of the treatment, the better), but it can also be as simple as an instruction on an at-home-trial medication saying “take 20 minutes before bed”. Because, if it weren’t important, they wouldn’t bother to specify that, right? So it must be important!
And now for a quick personality test
Did you see the above as a list of dastardly tricks to watch out for, or did you see the above as a list of things that can make your actual medication more effective?
It’s arguably both, of course, but the latter more optimistic view is a lot more useful than the former more pessimistic one.
Since placebo effect works at least somewhat even when you know about it, there is nothing to stop you from leveraging it for your own benefit when taking medication or doing health-related things.
Next time you take your meds or supplements or similar, pause for a moment for each one to remember what it is and what it will be doing for you. This is a lot like the principles (which are physiological as well as psychological) of mindful eating, by the way:
How To Get More Nutrition From The Same Food
Placebo makes some surprising things evidence-based
We’ve addressed placebo effect sometimes as part of an assessment of a given alternative therapy, often in our “Mythbusting Friday” edition of 10almonds.
- In some cases, placebo is adjuvant to the therapy, i.e. it is one of multiple mechanisms of action (example: chiropractic or acupuncture)
- In some cases, placebo is the only known mechanism of action (example: homeopathy)
- In some cases, even placebo can’t help (example: ear candling)
One other fascinating and far-reaching (in a potentially good way) thing that placebo makes evidence-based is: prayer
…which is particularly interesting for something that is fundamentally faith-based, i.e. the opposite of evidence-based.
Now, we’re a health science publication, not a theological publication, so we’ll consider actual divine intervention to be beyond the scope of mechanisms of action we can examine, but there’s been a lot of research done into the extent to which prayer is beneficial as a therapy, what things it may be beneficial for, and what factors affect whether it helps:
Prayer and healing: A medical and scientific perspective on randomized controlled trials
👆 full paper here, and it is very worthwhile reading if you have time, whether or not you are religious personally
Placebo works best when there’s a clear possibility for psychosomatic effect
We’ve mentioned before, and we’ll mention again:
- psychosomatic effect does not mean: “imagining it”
- psychosomatic effect means: “your brain regulates almost everything else in your body, directly or indirectly, including your autonomic functions, and especially notably when it comes to illness, your immune responses”
So, a placebo might well heal your rash or even shrink a tumor, but it probably won’t regrow a missing limb, for instance.
And, this is important: it’s not about how credible/miraculous the outcome will be!
Rather, it is because we have existing pre-programmed internal bodily processes for healing rashes and shrinking tumors, that just need to be activated—whereas we don’t have existing pre-programmed internal bodily processes for regrowing a missing limb, so that’s not something our brain can just tell our body to do.
So for this reason, in terms of what placebo can and can’t do:
- Get rid of cancer? Yes, sometimes—because the body has a process for doing that; enjoy your remission
- Fix a broken nail? No—because the body has no process for doing that; you’ll just have to cut it and wait for it to grow again
With that in mind, what will you use the not-so-mystical powers of placebo for? What ever you go for… Enjoy, and take care!
Share This Post
Related Posts
-
When Your Brain’s “Get-Up-And-Go” Has Got Up And Gone…
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.
Sometimes, there are days when the body feels heavy, the brain feels sluggish, and even the smallest tasks feel Herculean.
When these days stack up, this is usually a sign of depression, and needs attention. Unfortunately, when one is in such a state, taking action about it is almost impossible.
Almost, but not quite, as we wrote about previously:
The Mental Health First-Aid You’ll Hopefully Never Need ← this is about as close to true mental health bootstrapping as actually works
Today though, we’re going to assume it’s just an off-day or such. So, what to do about it?
Try turning it off and on again
Sometimes, a reboot is all that’s needed, and if napping is an option, it’s worth considering. However, if you don’t do it right, you can end up groggy and worse off than before, so do check out:
How To Be An Expert Nap-Artist (No More “Sleep Hangovers”!)
If your exhaustion is nevertheless accompanied by stresses that are keeping you from resting, then there’s another “turn it off and on again” process for that:
Fuel in the tank
Our brain is an energy-intensive organ, and cannot run on empty for long. Thus, lacking energy can sometimes simply be a matter of needing to supply some energy. Simple, no? Except, a lot of energy-giving foods can cause a paradoxical slump in energy, so here’s how to avoid that:
Eating For Energy (In Ways That Actually Work)
There are occasions when exhausted, when preparing food seems like too much work. If you’re not in a position to have someone else do it for you, how can you get “most for least” in terms of nutrition for effort?
Many of the above-linked items can help (a bowl of nuts and/or dried fruit is probably not going to break the energy-bank, for instance), but beyond that, there are other considerations too:
How To Eat To Beat Chronic Fatigue (While Chronically Fatigued) ← as the title tells, this is about chronic fatigue, but the advice therein definitely goes for acute fatigue also.
The lights aren’t on
Sometimes it may be that your body is actually fine, but your brain is working in a clunky fashion at best. Assuming there is no more drastic underlying cause for this, a lack of motivation is often as simple as a lack of appropriate dopamine response. When that’s the case…
Lacking Motivation? Science Has The Answer
If, instead, the issue is more serotonin-based than dopamine based, then green places with blue skies are ideal. Depending on geography and season, those things may be in short supply, but the brain is easily tricked with artificial plants and artificial sunlight. Is it as good as a walk in the park on a pleasant summer morning? Probably not, but it’s many times better than nothing, so get those juices flowing:
Neurotransmitter Cheatsheet ← four for the price of one, here!
Schedule time for rest, or your body/brain will schedule it for you
There’s a saying in the field of engineering that “if you don’t schedule time for maintenance, your equipment will schedule it for you”, and the same is true of our body/brain. If you’re struggling to get good quantity, here’s how to at least get good quality:
How To Rest More Efficiently (Yes, Really)
And, importantly,
7 Kinds Of Rest When Sleep Is Not Enough
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:
-
How Not to Age – by Dr. Michael Greger
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.
First things first: it’s a great book, and it’s this reviewer’s favorite of Dr. Greger’s so far (for posterity: it’s just been published and this reviewer has just finished reading the copy she got on pre-order)
Unlike many popular physician authors, Dr. Greger doesn’t rehash a lot of old material, and instead favours prioritizing new material in each work. Where appropriate, he’ll send the reader to other books for more specific information (e.g: you want to know how to avoid premature death? Go read How Not To Die. You want to know how to lose weight? How Not To Diet. Etc).
In the category of new information, he has a lot to offer here. And with over 8,000 references, it’s information, not conjecture. On which note, we recommend the e-book version if that’s possible for you, for three reasons:
- It’s possible to just click the references and be taken straight to the cited paper itself online
- To try to keep the book’s size down, Dr. Greger has linked to other external resources too
- The only negative reviews on Amazon, so far, are people complaining that the print copy’s text is smaller than they’d like
For all its information-density (those 8,000+ references are packed into 600ish pages), the book is very readable even to a lay reader; the author is a very skilled writer.
As for the content, we can’t fit more than a few sentences here so forgive the brevity, but we’ll mention that he covers:
- Slowing 11 pathways of aging
- The optimal anti-aging regimen according to current best science
- Preserving function (specific individual aspects of aging, e.g. hearing, sight, cognitive function, sexual function, hair, bones, etc)
- “Dr. Greger’s Anti-Aging Eight”
In terms of “flavor” of anti-aging science, his approach can be summed up as: diet and lifestyle as foundation; specific supplements and interventions as cornerstones.
Bottom line: this is now the anti-aging book.
Click here to check out How Not To Age, and look after yourself with the best modern science!
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:
-
Our blood-brain barrier stops bugs and toxins getting to our brain. Here’s how it works
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.
Our brain is an extremely complex and delicate organ. Our body fiercely protects it by holding onto things that help it and keeping harmful things out, such as bugs that can cause infection and toxins.
It does that though a protective layer called the blood-brain barrier. Here’s how it works, and what it means for drug design.
The Conversation, Rattiya Thongdumhyu/Shutterstock, Petr Ganaj/Pexels First, let’s look at the circulatory system
Adults have roughly 30 trillion cells in their body. Every cell needs a variety of nutrients and oxygen, and they produce waste, which needs to be taken away.
Our circulatory system provides this service, delivering nutrients and removing waste.
Fenestrated capillaries let nutrients and waste pass through. Vectormine/Shutterstock Where the circulatory system meets your cells, it branches down to tiny tubes called capillaries. These tiny tubes, about one-tenth the width of a human hair, are also made of cells.
But in most capillaries, there are some special features (known as fenestrations) that allow relatively free exchange of nutrients and waste between the blood and the cells of your tissues.
It’s kind of like pizza delivery
One way to think about the way the circulation works is like a pizza delivery person in a big city. On the really big roads (vessels) there are walls and you can’t walk up to the door of the house and pass someone the pizza.
But once you get down to the little suburban streets (capillaries), the design of the streets means you can stop, get off your scooter and walk up to the door to deliver the pizza (nutrients).
We often think of the brain as a spongy mass without much blood in it. In reality, the average brain has about 600 kilometres of blood vessels.
The difference between the capillaries in most of the brain and those elsewhere is that these capillaries are made of specialised cells that are very tightly joined together and limit the free exchange of anything dissolved in your blood. These are sometimes called continuous capillaries.
Continuous capillaries limit the free exchange of anything dissolved in your blood. Vectormine/Shutterstock This is the blood brain barrier. It’s not so much a bag around your brain stopping things from getting in and out but more like walls on all the streets, even the very small ones.
The only way pizza can get in is through special slots and these are just the right shape for the pizza box.
The blood brain barrier is set up so there are specialised transporters (like pizza box slots) for all the required nutrients. So mostly, the only things that can get in are things that there are transporters for or things that look very similar (on a molecular scale).
The analogy does fall down a little bit because the pizza box slot applies to nutrients that dissolve in water. Things that are highly soluble in fat can often bypass the slots in the wall.
Why do we have a blood-brain barrier?
The blood brain barrier is thought to exist for a few reasons.
First, it protects the brain from toxins you might eat (think chemicals that plants make) and viruses that often can infect the rest of your body but usually don’t make it to your brain.
It also provides protection by tightly regulating the movement of nutrients and waste in and out, providing a more stable environment than in the rest of the body.
Lastly, it serves to regulate passage of immune cells, preventing unnecessary inflammation which could damage cells in the brain.
What it means for medicines
One consequence of this tight regulation across the blood brain barrier is that if you want a medicine that gets to the brain, you need to consider how it will get in.
There are a few approaches. Highly fat-soluble molecules can often pass into the brain, so you might design your drug so it is a bit greasy.
The blood-brain barrier stops many medicines getting into the brain. Ron Lach/Pexels Another option is to link your medicine to another molecule that is normally taken up into the brain so it can hitch a ride, or a “pro-drug”, which looks like a molecule that is normally transported.
Using it to our advantage
You can also take advantage of the blood brain barrier.
Opioids used for pain relief often cause constipation. They do this because their target (opioid receptors) are also present in the nervous system of the intestines, where they act to slow movement of the intestinal contents.
Imodium (Loperamide), which is used to treat diarrhoea, is actually an opioid, but it has been specifically designed so it can’t cross the blood brain barrier.
This design means it can act on opioid receptors in the gastrointestinal tract, slowing down the movement of contents, but does not act on brain opioid receptors.
In contrast to Imodium, Ozempic and Victoza (originally designed for type 2 diabetes, but now popular for weight-loss) both have a long fat attached, to improve the length of time they stay in the body.
A consequence of having this long fat attached is that they can cross the blood-brain barrier, where they act to suppress appetite. This is part of the reason they are so effective as weight-loss drugs.
So while the blood brain barrier is important for protecting the brain it presents both a challenge and an opportunity for development of new medicines.
Sebastian Furness, ARC Future Fellow, School of Biomedical Sciences, The University of Queensland
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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:
