Do CBD Gummies Work?

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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 take CBD gummies. I don’t know if they are worth buying. Can you find a study on the effectiveness of gummies❞

If you take them, and you’re not sure whether they’re worth it, then it sounds like you’re not getting any observable benefit from them?

If so, that would seem to answer your question, since presumably the reason that you are taking them is for relaxation and/or pain relief, so if you’re not getting the results you want, then no, they are not worth it.

However! CBD gummies are an incredibly diverse and not-well-studied product, so far, given the relative novelty of their legality. By diverse we mean, they’re not well-standardized.

In other words: the CBD gummies you get could be completely unlike CBD gummies from a different source.

CBD itself (i.e. in forms other than just gummies, and mostly as oil) has been studied somewhat better, and we did a main feature on it here:

CBD Oil’s Many Benefits

And while we’re at it:

Cannabis Myths vs Reality ← This one is about cannabis products in general, and includes discussion of THC content and effects, which might not be so relevant to you, but may to some readers.

Companies selling CBD and CBD gummies may make bold claims that are not yet backed by science, so if you are buying them for those reasons, you might want to be aware:

Selling cannabidiol products in Canada: a framing analysis of advertising claims by online retailers

One thing that we would add is that even though CBD is generally recognized as safe, it is possible to overdose on CBD gummies, so do watch your limits:

A Case of Toxicity from Cannabidiol Gummy Ingestion

Take care!

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  • Plum vs Nectarine – Which is Healthier?

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    Our Verdict

    When comparing plums to nectarines, we picked the nectarines.

    Why?

    Both are great! But nectarines win at least marginally in each category we look at.

    In terms of macros, plums have more carbs while nectarines have more fiber, resulting of course in a lower glycemic index. Plums do have a low GI also; just, nectarines have it better.

    When it comes to vitamins, plums have more of vitamins A, B6, C, and K, while nectarines have more of vitamins B1, B2, B3, B5, E, and choline.

    In the category of minerals, plums are great but not higher in any mineral than nectarines; nectarines meanwhile have more copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, and zinc.

    All in all, enjoy both. And if having dried fruit, then prunes (dried plums) are generally more widely available than dried nectarines. But if you’re choosing one fruit or the other, nectarine is the way to go.

    Want to learn more?

    You might like to read:

    Take care!

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  • Olfactory Training, Better

    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.

    Anosmia, by any other name…

    The loss of the sense of smell (anosmia) is these days well-associated with COVID and Long-COVID, but also can simply come with age:

    National Institute of Aging | How Smell & Taste Change With Age

    …although it can also be something else entirely:

    ❝Another possibility is a problem with part of the nervous system responsible for smell.

    Some studies have suggested that loss of smell could be an early sign of a neurodegenerative disease, such as Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s disease.

    However, a recent study of 1,430 people (average age about 80) showed that 76% of people with anosmia had normal cognitive function at the study’s end.❞

    Read more: Harvard Health | Is it normal to lose my sense of smell as I age?

    We’d love to look at and cite the paper that they cite, but they didn’t actually provide a source. We did find some others, though:

    ❝Olfactory capacity declines with aging, but increasing evidence shows that smell dysfunction is one of the early signs of prodromal neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.

    The loss of smell is considered a clinical sign of early-stage disease and a marker of the disease’s progression and cognitive impairment.❞

    ~ Dr. Irene Fatuzzo et al.

    Read more: Neurons, Nose, and Neurodegenerative Diseases: Olfactory Function and Cognitive Impairment

    What’s clear is the association; what’s not clear is whether one worsens the other, and what causal role each might play. However, the researchers conclude that both ways are possible, including when there is another, third, underlying potential causal factor:

    ❝Ongoing studies on COVID-19 anosmia could reveal new molecular aspects unexplored in olfactory impairments due to neurodegenerative diseases, shedding a light on the validity of smell test predictivity of cognitive dementia.

    The neuroepithelium might become a new translational research target (Neurons, Nose, and Neurodegenerative diseases) to investigate alternative approaches for intranasal therapy and the treatment of brain disorders. ❞

    ~ Ibid.

    Another study explored the possible mechanisms of action, and found…

    ❝Olfactory impairment was significantly associated with increased likelihoods of MCI, amnestic MCI, and non-amnestic MCI.

    In the subsamples, anosmia was significantly associated with higher plasma total tau and NfL concentrations, smaller hippocampal and entorhinal cortex volumes, and greater WMH volume, and marginally with lower AD-signature cortical thickness.

    These results suggest that cerebral neurodegenerative and microvascular lesions are common neuropathologies linking anosmia with MCI in older adults❞

    ~ Dr. Yi Dong et al.

    • MCI = Mild Cognitive Impairment
    • NfL = Neurofilament Light [Chain]
    • WMH = White Matter Hyperintensity
    • AD =Alzheimer’s Disease

    Read more: Anosmia, mild cognitive impairment, and biomarkers of brain aging in older adults

    How to act on this information

    You may be wondering, “this is fascinating and maybe even a little bit frightening, but how is this Saturday’s Life Hacks?”

    We wanted to set up the “why” before getting to the “how”, because with a big enough “why”, it’s much easier to find the motivation to act on the “how”.

    Test yourself

    Or more conveniently, you and a partner/friend/relative can test each other.

    Simply do like a “blind taste testing”, but for smell. Ideally these will be a range of simple and complex odors, and commercially available smell test kits will provide these, if you don’t want to make do with random items from your kitchen.

    If you’d like to use a clinical diagnostic tool, you can check out:

    Clinical assessment of patients with smell and taste disorders

    …and especially, this really handy diagnostic flowchart:

    Algorithm of evaluation of a patient who has olfactory loss

    Train yourself

    “Olfactory training” has been the got-to for helping people to regain their sense of smell after losing it due to COVID.

    In simple terms, this means simply trying to smell things that “should” have a distinctive odor, and gradually working up one’s repertoire of what one can smell.

    You can get some great tips here:

    AbScent | Useful Insights Into Smell Training

    Hack your training

    An extra trick was researched deeply in a recent study which found that multisensory integration helped a) initially regain the ability to smell things and b) maintain that ability later without the cross-sensory input.

    What that means: you will more likely be able to smell lemon while viewing the color yellow, and most likely of all to be able to smell lemon while actually holding and looking at a slice of lemon. Having done this, you’re more likely to be able to smell (and distinguish) the odor of lemon later in a blind smell test.

    In other words: with this method, you may be able to cut out many months of frustration of trying and failing to smell something, and skip straight to the “re-adding specific smells to my brain’s olfactory database” bit.

    Read the study: Olfactory training: effects of multisensory integration, attention towards odors and physical activity

    Or if you prefer, here’s a pop-science article based on that:

    One in twenty people has no sense of smell—here’s how they might get it back

    Take care!

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  • Counterclockwise – by Dr. Ellen Langer

    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 written previously about Dr. Langer’s famous “Counterclockwise” study that saw reversals in biological markers of aging after a one-week intervention that consisted only of a (albeit rather intensive) mental reframe with regard to their age.

    This book, as you might expect from the title, refers to that experiment a lot—but it doesn’t stop there. While the Counterclockwise experiment remains Dr. Langer’s most well-known, it’s not her most recent, and she draws from a wealth of research (her own and that of her colleagues in the field) to show the extent and limit of psychosomatic effect on aging.

    Note:

    • 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, which includes immune function, tissue replacement, and more”

    And as for when it comes to aging? Aging, like cancer, is in large part a problem of immune dysfunction; in both cases cells (be they senescent or cancerous, respectively) are not being killed when they are supposed to be, and in both cases, better instructions will improve the matter.

    Many larger-scale markers of aging, such as mobility, are a case of the body only being able to do what the tissues allow, and the tissues are being constantly rebuilt (for better or for worse) according to autonomically-implemented specifications, and cells’ ability to carry out those orders.

    Beyond the cellular physiology, this book discusses (a lot) the brain-down mechanisms by which the most powerful organ in our body can tell the rest of the body how old to be.

    Dr. Langer also discusses the matter of “priming”, that is to say, how external factors prime us to believe certain things about our age and, with it, our health. These things can include popular media, conversations with friends and family, and healthcare providers’ framing of certain issues.

    For example, a person just under a certain age and a person just over a certain age could both go to the doctor with the same complaint—a pain in a certain joint, let’s say. The doctor may refer the slightly younger patient for an x-ray because “let’s see what’s going on here”, and prescribe the slightly older patient some painkillers because “this is perfectly normal at your age”. One resultant problem is obvious: a difference in the standard of care. But the other resultant problem is less obvious: the older patient has now been primed to believe, by a confident authority figure, “it is natural for my body to be in a state of decline now, and this is what to expect”.

    Thus, Dr. Langer prescribes mindfulness, not in the mindfulness meditation sense (though sure, do that too), but rather in the sense of consciously interacting with the world and making our own decisions about our own health and, yes, our own age. Because after all, our body neither knows nor cares how many times it has flown around the sun, and merely responds to physiological stimuli—including those we can influence with psychological reframing.

    The book is not, per se, a “how-to” guide, rather it is an explanatory treatise, but it contains more than enough information to put it into practice, and indeed, she does also provide some exercises to do along the way.

    The style is… Vivacious, without being especially upbeat. Dr. Langer is enthused about her work, yes, but she’s also angry at how many people are having their health sabotaged on the daily, and calls for a more health-first approach (as opposed to illness-first).

    Bottom line: this is the book on our brain’s power over aging, so if that topic interests you, this book absolutely belongs on your bookshelf. Well, in your hands, and then on the bookshelf, and then back in your hands from time to time.

    Click here to check out Counterclockwise, and age counterclockwise as her experimental subjects did!

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  • Healthy Longevity As A Lifestyle Choice

    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.

    7 Keys To Healthy Longevity

    This is Dr. Luigi Fontana. He’s a research professor of Geriatrics & Nutritional Science, and co-director of the Longevity Research Program at Washington University in St. Louis.

    What does he want us to know?

    He has a many-fold approach to healthy longevity, most of which may not be news to you, but you might want to prioritize some things:

    Consider caloric restriction with optimal nutrition (CRON)

    This is about reducing the metabolic load on your body, which frees up bodily resources for keeping yourself young.

    Keeping your body young and healthy is your body’s favorite thing to do, but it can’t do that if it never gets a chance because of all the urgent metabolic tasks you’re giving it.

    If CRON isn’t your thing (isn’t practicable for you, causes undue suffering, etc) then intermittent fasting is a great CR mimetic, and he recommends that too. See also:

    Keep your waistline small

    Whichever approach you prefer to use to look after your metabolic health, keeping your waistline down is much more important for health than BMI.

    Specifically, he recommends keeping it:

    • under 31.5” for women
    • under 37” for men

    The disparity here is because of hormonal differences that influence both metabolism and fat distribution.

    Exercise as part of your lifestyle

    For Dr. Fontana, he loves mountain-biking (this writer could never!) and weight-lifting (also not my thing). But what’s key is not the specifics, but what’s going on:

    • Some kind of frequent movement
    • Some kind of high-intensity interval training
    • Some kind of resistance training

    Frequent movement because our bodies are evolved to be moving more often than not:

    The Doctor Who Wants Us To Exercise Less, & Move More

    High-Intensity Interval Training because unlike most forms of exercise (which slow metabolism afterwards to compensate), it boosts metabolism for up to 2 hours after training:

    How To Do HIIT (Without Wrecking Your Body)

    Resistance training because strength (of muscles and bones) matters too:

    Resistance Is Useful! (Especially As We Get Older)

    Writer’s examples:

    So while I don’t care for mountain-biking or weight-lifting, what I do is:

    1) movement: walk (briskly!) everywhere and also use a standing desk
    2) HIIT: 2-minute bursts of hindu squats and/or exercise bike sprints
    3) resistance: pilates and other calisthenics

    Moderation is not key

    Dr. Fontana advises that we do not smoke, and that we do not drink alcohol, for example. He also notes that just as the only healthy amount of alcohol is zero, less ultra-processed food is always better than more.

    Maybe you don’t want to abstain completely, but mindful wilful consumption of something unhealthy is preferable to believing “moderate consumption is good for the health” and an unhealthy habit develops!

    Greens and beans

    Shocking absolutely nobody, Dr. Fontana advocates for (what has been the most evidence-based gold standard of healthy-aging diets for quite some years now) the Mediterranean diet.

    See also: Four Ways To Upgrade The Mediterranean Diet ← this is about tweaking the Mediterranean diet per personal area of focus, e.g. anti-inflammatory bonus, best for gut, heart healthiest, and most neuroprotective.

    Take it easy

    Dr. Fontana advises us (again, with a wealth of evidence) Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, and to get good sleep.

    Not shocked?

    To quote the good doctor,

    ❝There are no shortcuts. No magic pills or expensive procedures can replace the beneficial effects of a healthy diet, exercise, mindfulness, or a regenerating night’s sleep.❞

    Always a good reminder!

    Want to know more?

    You might enjoy his book “The Path to Longevity: How to Reach 100 with the Health and Stamina of a 40-Year-Old”, which we reviewed previously

    You might also like this video of his, about changing the conversation from “chronic disease” to “chronic health”:

    !

    Want to watch it, but not right now? Bookmark it for later

    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

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  • Which Comes First, Cardio or Weights? – by Alex Hutchinson

    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.

    This is a book of questions and answers, myths and busts, and in short, all things exercise.

    It’s laid out as many micro-chapters with questions as headers. The explanations are clear and easy to understand, with several citations (of studies and other academic papers) per question.

    While it’s quite comprehensive (weighing in at a hefty 300+ pages), it’s not the kind of book where one could just look up any given piece of information that one wants.

    Its strength, rather, lies in pre-emptively arming the reader with knowledge, and correcting many commonly-believed myths. It can be read cover-to-cover, or just dipped into per what interests you (the table of contents lists all questions, so it’s easy to flip through).

    Bottom line: if you’ve found the world of exercise a little confusing and would like it demystifying, this book will result in a lot of “Oooooh” moments.

    Click here to check out Which Comes First, Cardio or Weights?, and know your stuff!

    PS: the short answer to the titular question is “mix it up and keep it varied”

    Don’t Forget…

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    Learn to Age Gracefully

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  • Elderhood – by Dr. Louise Aronson

    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.

    Where does “middle age” end, and “old age” begin? By the United States’ CDC’s categorization, human life involves:

    • 17 stages of childhood, deemed 0–18
    • 5 stages of adulthood, deemed 18–60
    • 1 stage of elderhood, deemed 60+

    Isn’t there something missing here? Do we just fall off some sort of conveyor belt on our sixtieth birthdays, into one big bucket marked “old”?

    Yesterday you were 59 and enjoying your middle age; today you have, apparently, the same medical factors and care needs as a 114-year-old.

    Dr. Louise Aronson, a geriatrician, notes however that medical science tends to underestimate the differences found in more advanced old age, and underresearch them. That elders consume half of a country’s medicines, but are not required to be included in clinical trials. That side effects not only are often different than for younger adults, but also can cause symptoms that are then dismissed as “Oh she’s just old”.

    She explores, mostly through personal career anecdotes, the well-intentioned disregard that is frequently given by the medical profession, and—importantly—how we might overcome that, as individuals and as a society.

    Bottom line: if you are over the age of 60, love someone over the age of 60, this is a book for you. Similarly if you and/or they plan to live past the age of 60, this is also a book for you.

    Click here to check out Elderhood, and empower yours!

    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: