Do Essential Oils Really Have Medicinal Properties?

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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 😎

❝Do essential oils really have scientific merit?❞

‌Great question! Assuming you mean “…for medicinal purposes” then it really depends on the oil in question.

For example, one can probably buy a big book of essential oils from a New Age store, and a lot of claims for different oils will not have any scientific backing whatsoever.

However! Some definitely do. For example, we wrote a little while back about ginger:

Ginger Does A Lot More Than You Think

Now, the active compound that gives ginger those properties and more is gingerol. Which is usually found as pure ginger oil, in other words, ginger essential oil.

Another essential oil that definitely does have benefits is that of Boswellia serrata, commonly known as frankincense. It can be used in various forms, and the essential oil is one of them; see:

Meanwhile, menthol, the essential oil of peppermint, has its pros and cons:

Peppermint For Digestion & Against Nausea: How Useful Is Peppermint, Really?

And lavender essential oil does really have a sedative effect:

Herbs for Evidence-Based Health & Healing

If you have a different, particular essential oil in mind, let us know, and we can do a deep-dive on it for one of our “Research Review” editions!

A note on safety

Essential oils are pure and undiluted extracts of what’s usually a particularly potent chemical from a plant. Two things to bear in mind about this:

  • Just because a chemical is potent, does not mean it will necessarily help you in a specific way, or indeed at all. On the contrary, many potent chemicals are simply harmful. So, be careful.
  • Essential oils being so strong means that usually only a drop or two is required for effects; consult available literature (or ask us to do that for you!), and employ good safety practices such as:
    • Do not use undiluted essential oils on your skin or internally
    • If you are going to use it internally (diluted, following instructions from a reputable source, and with your doctor’s blessing, please) then test it on your skin first at the same dilution, in case of any adverse reaction.
    • However you are using it, if you have any kind of adverse reaction, stop, and seek medical attention if it’s severe and/or it persists.

Take care!

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  • Plant-Based Alternatives for Meat Recipes

    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

    ❝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:

    Take care!

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  • Can I Eat That? – by Jenefer Roberts

    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 answer to the question in the title is: you can eat pretty much anything, if you’re prepared for the consequences!

    This book looks to give you the information to make your own decisions in that regard. There’s a large section on the science of glucose metabolism in the context of food (other aspects of glucose metabolism aren’t covered), so you will not simply be told “raw carrots are good; mashed potatoes are bad”, you’ll understand many factors that affect it, e.g:

    • Macronutrient profiles of food and resultant base glycemic indices
    • How the glycemic index changes if you cut something, crush it, mash it, juice it, etc
    • How the glycemic index changes if you chill something, heat it, fry it, boil it, etc
    • The many “this food works differently in the presence of this other food” factors
    • How your relative level of insulin resistance affects things itself

    …and much more.

    The style is simple and explanatory, without deep science, but with good science and comprehensive advice.

    There are also the promised recipes; they’re in an appendix at the back and aren’t the main meat of the book, though.

    Bottom line: if you’ve ever found it confusing working out what works how in the mysterious world of diabetes nutrition, this book is a top tier demystifier.

    Click here to check out Can I Eat That?, and gain confidence in your food choices!

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  • Three Daily Servings of Beans?

    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

    ❝Not crazy about the Dr.s food advice. Beans 3X a day?❞

    For reference, this is in response to our recent article on the topic of 12 things to aim to get a certain amount of each day:

    Dr. Greger’s Daily Dozen

    So, there are a couple of things to look at here:

    Firstly, don’t worry, it’s a guideline and an aim. If you don’t hit it on a given day, there is always tomorrow. It’s just good to know what one is aiming for, because without knowing that, achieving it will be a lot less likely!

    Secondly, the beans/legumes/pulses category says three servings, but the example serving sizes are quite small, e.g. ½ cup cooked beans, or ¼ cup hummus. And also as you notice, dips/pastes/sauces made from beans count too. So given the portion sizes, you could easily get two servings in by breakfast (and two servings of whole grains, too) if you enjoy frijoles refritos, for example. Many of the recipes we share on this site have “stealth” beans/legumes/pulses in this fashion

    Take care!

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Related Posts

  • Fitness In Our Fifties
  • Traveling To Die: The Latest Form of Medical Tourism

    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.

    In the 18 months after Francine Milano was diagnosed with a recurrence of the ovarian cancer she thought she’d beaten 20 years ago, she traveled twice from her home in Pennsylvania to Vermont. She went not to ski, hike, or leaf-peep, but to arrange to die.

    “I really wanted to take control over how I left this world,” said the 61-year-old who lives in Lancaster. “I decided that this was an option for me.”

    Dying with medical assistance wasn’t an option when Milano learned in early 2023 that her disease was incurable. At that point, she would have had to travel to Switzerland — or live in the District of Columbia or one of the 10 states where medical aid in dying was legal.

    But Vermont lifted its residency requirement in May 2023, followed by Oregon two months later. (Montana effectively allows aid in dying through a 2009 court decision, but that ruling doesn’t spell out rules around residency. And though New York and California recently considered legislation that would allow out-of-staters to secure aid in dying, neither provision passed.)

    Despite the limited options and the challenges — such as finding doctors in a new state, figuring out where to die, and traveling when too sick to walk to the next room, let alone climb into a car — dozens have made the trek to the two states that have opened their doors to terminally ill nonresidents seeking aid in dying.

    At least 26 people have traveled to Vermont to die, representing nearly 25% of the reported assisted deaths in the state from May 2023 through this June, according to the Vermont Department of Health. In Oregon, 23 out-of-state residents died using medical assistance in 2023, just over 6% of the state total, according to the Oregon Health Authority.

    Oncologist Charles Blanke, whose clinic in Portland is devoted to end-of-life care, said he thinks that Oregon’s total is likely an undercount and he expects the numbers to grow. Over the past year, he said, he’s seen two to four out-of-state patients a week — about one-quarter of his practice — and fielded calls from across the U.S., including New York, the Carolinas, Florida, and “tons from Texas.” But just because patients are willing to travel doesn’t mean it’s easy or that they get their desired outcome.

    “The law is pretty strict about what has to be done,” Blanke said.

    As in other states that allow what some call physician-assisted death or assisted suicide, Oregon and Vermont require patients to be assessed by two doctors. Patients must have less than six months to live, be mentally and cognitively sound, and be physically able to ingest the drugs to end their lives. Charts and records must be reviewed in the state; neglecting to do so constitutes practicing medicine out of state, which violates medical licensing requirements. For the same reason, the patients must be in the state for the initial exam, when they request the drugs, and when they ingest them.

    State legislatures impose those restrictions as safeguards — to balance the rights of patients seeking aid in dying with a legislative imperative not to pass laws that are harmful to anyone, said Peg Sandeen, CEO of the group Death With Dignity. Like many aid-in-dying advocates, however, she said such rules create undue burdens for people who are already suffering.

    Diana Barnard, a Vermont palliative care physician, said some patients cannot even come for their appointments. “They end up being sick or not feeling like traveling, so there’s rescheduling involved,” she said. “It’s asking people to use a significant part of their energy to come here when they really deserve to have the option closer to home.”

    Those opposed to aid in dying include religious groups that say taking a life is immoral, and medical practitioners who argue their job is to make people more comfortable at the end of life, not to end the life itself.

    Anthropologist Anita Hannig, who interviewed dozens of terminally ill patients while researching her 2022 book, “The Day I Die: The Untold Story of Assisted Dying in America,” said she doesn’t expect federal legislation to settle the issue anytime soon. As the Supreme Court did with abortion in 2022, it ruled assisted dying to be a states’ rights issue in 1997.

    During the 2023-24 legislative sessions, 19 states (including Milano’s home state of Pennsylvania) considered aid-in-dying legislation, according to the advocacy group Compassion & Choices. Delaware was the sole state to pass it, but the governor has yet to act on it.

    Sandeen said that many states initially pass restrictive laws — requiring 21-day wait times and psychiatric evaluations, for instance — only to eventually repeal provisions that prove unduly onerous. That makes her optimistic that more states will eventually follow Vermont and Oregon, she said.

    Milano would have preferred to travel to neighboring New Jersey, where aid in dying has been legal since 2019, but its residency requirement made that a nonstarter. And though Oregon has more providers than the largely rural state of Vermont, Milano opted for the nine-hour car ride to Burlington because it was less physically and financially draining than a cross-country trip.

    The logistics were key because Milano knew she’d have to return. When she traveled to Vermont in May 2023 with her husband and her brother, she wasn’t near death. She figured that the next time she was in Vermont, it would be to request the medication. Then she’d have to wait 15 days to receive it.

    The waiting period is standard to ensure that a person has what Barnard calls “thoughtful time to contemplate the decision,” although she said most have done that long before. Some states have shortened the period or, like Oregon, have a waiver option.

    That waiting period can be hard on patients, on top of being away from their health care team, home, and family. Blanke said he has seen as many as 25 relatives attend the death of an Oregon resident, but out-of-staters usually bring only one person. And while finding a place to die can be a problem for Oregonians who are in care homes or hospitals that prohibit aid in dying, it’s especially challenging for nonresidents.

    When Oregon lifted its residency requirement, Blanke advertised on Craigslist and used the results to compile a list of short-term accommodations, including Airbnbs, willing to allow patients to die there. Nonprofits in states with aid-in-dying laws also maintain such lists, Sandeen said.

    Milano hasn’t gotten to the point where she needs to find a place to take the meds and end her life. In fact, because she had a relatively healthy year after her first trip to Vermont, she let her six-month approval period lapse.

    In June, though, she headed back to open another six-month window. This time, she went with a girlfriend who has a camper van. They drove six hours to cross the state border, stopping at a playground and gift shop before sitting in a parking lot where Milano had a Zoom appointment with her doctors rather than driving three more hours to Burlington to meet in person.

    “I don’t know if they do GPS tracking or IP address kind of stuff, but I would have been afraid not to be honest,” she said.

    That’s not all that scares her. She worries she’ll be too sick to return to Vermont when she is ready to die. And, even if she can get there, she wonders whether she’ll have the courage to take the medication. About one-third of people approved for assisted death don’t follow through, Blanke said. For them, it’s often enough to know they have the meds — the control — to end their lives when they want.

    Milano said she is grateful she has that power now while she’s still healthy enough to travel and enjoy life. “I just wish more people had the option,” she said.

    KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

    Subscribe to KFF Health News’ free Morning Briefing.

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  • To Pee Or Not To Pee

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    Is it “strengthening” to hold, or are we doing ourselves harm if we do? Dr. Heba Shaheed explains in this short video:

    A flood of reasons not to hold

    Humans should urinate 4–6 times daily, but for many people, the demands of modern life often lead to delaying urination, raising questions about its effects on the body.

    So first, let’s look at how it all works: the bladder is part of the urinary system, which includes the kidneys, ureters, urethra, and sphincters. Urine is produced by the kidneys and transported via the ureters into the bladder, a hollow organ with a muscular wall. This muscle (called the detrusor) allows the bladder to inflate as it fills with urine (bearing in mind, the main job of any muscle is to be able to stretch and contract).

    As the bladder fills, stretch receptors in that muscle signal fullness to the spinal cord. This triggers the micturition reflex, causing the detrusor to contract and the internal urethral sphincter to open involuntarily. Voluntary control over the external urethral sphincter allows a person to delay or release urine as needed.

    So, at what point is it best to go forth and pee?

    For most people, bladder fullness is first noticeable at around 150-200ml, with discomfort occurring at 400-500ml (that’s about two cups*). Although the bladder can stretch to hold up to a liter, exceeding this capacity can cause it to rupture, a rare but serious condition requiring surgical intervention.

    *note, however, that this doesn’t necessarily mean that drinking two cups will result in two cups being in your bladder; that’s not how hydration works. Unless you are already perfectly hydrated, most if not all of the water will be absorbed into the rest of your body where it is needed. Your bladder gets filled when your body has waste products to dispose of that way, and/or is overhydrated (though overhydration is not very common).

    Habitually holding urine and/or urinating too quickly (note: not “too soon”, but literally, “too quickly”, we’re talking about the velocity at which it exits the body) can weaken pelvic floor muscles over time. This can lead to bladder pain, urgency, incontinence, and/or a damaged pelvic floor.

    In short: while the body’s systems are equipped to handle occasional delays, holding it regularly is not advisable. For the good of your long-term urinary health, it’s best to avoid straining the system and go whenever you feel the urge.

    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:

    Keeping your kidneys happy: it’s more than just hydration!

    Take care!

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  • Four Habits That Drastically Improve Mobility

    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.

    Mobility is critical for health living, but stretching isn’t the entire story:

    Beyond just stretching

    Liv Townsend, of LivInLeggings fames, recommends these four habits:

    1. Sit less: prolonged sitting affects hip and shoulder mobility. Specifically, it affects it negatively. It is also a bringer of woe in many other ways beyond the scope of what we’re doing here today, but the important thing for mobility is to sit less. So, if you spent a lot of time at a desk, invest in a standing desk (writer’s note: I dearly love mine, which is technically a sit-stand converter like this one on Amazon but I just keep it in the up position all the time, so it’s easy to forget it has multiple settings. Anyway, it’s sooooooo much better for my back than sitting for hours at a time.). For how to deal with other (i.e. not desk-related) reasons you might be sitting a lot, check out: Stand Up For Your Health (Or Don’t*)
    2. Take creatine: more than just for strength and muscle-building (and even aside from its brain-benefits that it bestows to older people, but not young ones), creatine also supports mobility and flexibility. Any brand is fine, so long as creatine monohydrate is the sole ingredient. Also, micronized or not is also fine—that’s just to do with whether it’s been pre-compacted into super-tiny beads (so small that it will still effectively be a powder), which helps it to avoid clumping when mixed in a liquid, that’s all. It shouldn’t have any additives either way (so, check labels to ensure it doesn’t).
    3. Spend more time under tension: no, we’re not talking about texting your spouse “we need to talk”, but rather, this means that when we do stretch, we should spend longer in the stretched position. While dynamic stretching has its place, passive stretching (holding stretches for longer periods) is essential and shouldn’t be overlooked.
    4. Incorporate “movement snacks”: this is about when we are going about our daily life, we should move more while doing everyday tasks. Get in some shoulder stretches while waiting for the kettle to boil, deep squat while petting the dog, etc. These are very important, because mobility is very much a “use it or lose it” thing, and so moving in many different ways, frequently, is the only way to ensure full coverage (no stretching regimen is going to be able to cover the many compound movements that we do in everyday life).

    *That article also covers how to avoid the damage of sitting even if you cannot physically stand!

    For more on all of these, enjoy:

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

    Want to learn more?

    You might also like to read:

    Mobility As Though A Sporting Pursuit: Train For The Event Of Your Life!

    Take care!

    Don’t Forget…

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