Eggs: Nutritional Powerhouse or Heart-Health Timebomb?
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Eggs: All Things In Moderation?
We asked you for your (health-related) opinion on eggs. We specified that, for the sake of simplicity, let’s say that they are from happy healthy backyard hens who enjoy a good diet.
Apparently this one wasn’t as controversial as it might have been! We (for myth-busting purposes) try to pick something polarizing and sometimes even contentious for our Friday editions, and pick apart what science lies underneath public perceptions.
However, more than half (in fact, 60%) of the subscribers who voted in the poll voted for “Eggs are nutritionally beneficial as part of a balanced diet”, which very moderate statement is indeed pretty much the global scientific consensus.
Still, we’ve a main feature to write, so let’s look at the science, and what the other 40% had in mind:
Eggs are ruinous to health, especially cardiometabolic health: True or False?
False, per best current science, anyway!
Scientific consensus has changed over the years. We learned about cholesterol, then we learned about different types of cholesterol, and now we’ve even learned about in some instances even elevated levels of “bad” cholesterol aren’t necessarily a cause of cardiometabolic disorders so much as a symptom—especially in women.
Not to derail this main feature about eggs (rather than just cholesterol), but for those who missed it, this is actually really interesting: basically, research (pertaining to the use of statins) has found that in women, higher LDL levels aren’t anywhere near the same kind of risk factor as they are for men, and thus may mean that statins (whose main job is reducing LDL) may be much less helpful for women than for men, and more likely to cause unwanted serious side effects in women.
Check out our previous main feature about this: Statins: His & Hers?
But, for back on topic, several large studies (totalling 177,000 people in long-term studies in 50 countries) found:
❝Results from the three cohorts and from the updated meta-analysis show that moderate egg consumption (up to one egg per day) is not associated with cardiovascular disease risk overall, and is associated with potentially lower cardiovascular disease risk in Asian populations.❞
Egg whites are healthy (protein); egg yolks are not (cholesterol): True or False?
True and False, respectively. That is to say, egg whites are healthy (protein), and egg yolks are also healthy (many nutrients).
We talked a bit already about cholesterol, so we’ll not rehash that here. As to the rest:
Eggs are one of the most nutritionally dense foods around. After all, they have everything required to allow a cluster of cells to become a whole baby chick. That’s a lot of body-building!
They’re even more nutritionally heavy-hitters if you get omega-3 enriched eggs, which means the hens were fed extra omega-3, usually in the form of flax seeds.
Also, free-range is better healthwise than others. Do bear in mind that unless they really are from your backyard, or a neighbor’s, chances are that the reality is not what the advertising depicts, though. There are industry minimum standards to be able to advertise as “free-range”, and those standards are a) quite low b) often ignored, because an occasional fine is cheaper than maintaining good conditions.
So if you can look after your own hens, or get them from somewhere that you can see for yourself how they are looked after, so much the better!
Check out the differences side-by-side, though:
Pastured vs Omega-3 vs “Conventional” Eggs: What’s the Difference?
Stallone-style 12-egg smoothies are healthy: True or False?
False, at least if taken with any regularity. One can indeed have too much of a good thing.
So, what’s the “right amount” to eat?
It may vary depending on individual factors (including age and ethnicity), but a good average, according to science, is to keep it to 3 eggs or fewer per day. There are a lot of studies, but we only have so much room here, so we’ll pick one. Its findings are representative of (and in keeping with) the many other studies we looked at, so this seems uncontroversial scientifically:
❝Intake of 1 egg/d was sufficient to increase HDL function and large-LDL particle concentration; however, intake of 2-3 eggs/d supported greater improvements in HDL function as well as increased plasma carotenoids. Overall, intake of ≤3 eggs/d favored a less atherogenic LDL particle profile, improved HDL function, and increased plasma antioxidants in young, healthy adults.❞
Enjoy!
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Fruit & Veg In The Fridge: Pros & Cons
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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
❝What effect does refrigeration have on the nutritional value of fruit and vegetables??❞
It’s difficult to give a single definitive answer, because naturally there are a lot of different fruits and vegetables, and a lot of different climates. The answer may be different for tomatoes in Alaska vs bananas in Arizona!
However, we can still generalize at least somewhat
Refrigeration will generally slow down any degradation process, and in the case of fruit and vegetables, that can mean slowing down their “ripening” too, as applicable.
However…
Refrigeration will also impede helpful bioactivity too, and that includes quite a list of things.
Here’s a good study that’s quite illustrative; we’d summarize the conclusions but the rather long title already does that nicely:
So, this really is a case of “there are pros and cons, but probably more cons on balance”.
In practical terms, a good take-away from this can be twofold:
- don’t keep fruit and veg in the fridge unless the ambient temperature really requires it
- if the ambient temperature does require it, it’s best to get the produce in fresh each day if that’s feasible, to minimize time spent in the fridge
An extra thing not included there: often when it comes to the spoilage of fruit and veg, the problem is that it respires and oxidizes; reducing the temperature does lower the rate of those, but often a far better way is to remove the oxygen. So for example, if you get carried away and chop too many carrot batons for your hummus night, then putting them in a sealed container can go a long way to keeping them fresh.
See also: How Does the Nutritional Value of Fruits and Vegetables Change Over Time?
Enjoy!
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What You Should Have Been Told About The Menopause Beforehand
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What You Should Have Been Told About Menopause Beforehand
This is Dr. Jen Gunter. She’s a gynecologist, specializing in chronic pain and vulvovaginal disorders. She’s also a woman on a mission to demystify things that popular culture, especially in the US, would rather not talk about.
When was the last time you remember the menopause being referenced in a movie or TV show? If you can think of one at all, was it just played for laughs?
And of course, the human body can be funny, so that’s not necessarily the problem, but it sure would be nice if that weren’t all that there is!
So, what does Dr. Gunter want us to know?
It’s a time of changes, not an end
The name “menopause” is misleading. It’s not a “pause”, and those menses aren’t coming back.
And yet, to call it a “menostop” would be differently misleading, because there’s a lot more going on than a simple cessation of menstruation.
Estrogen levels will drop a lot, testosterone levels may rise slightly, mood and sleep and appetite and sex drive will probably be affected (progesterone can improve all these things!) and
not to mention butwe’re going to mention: vaginal atrophy, which is very normal and very treatable with a topical estrogen cream. Untreated menopause can also bring a whole lot of increased health risks (for example, heart disease, osteoporosis, and, counterintuitively given the lower estrogen levels, breast cancer).However, with a little awareness and appropriate management, all these things can usually be navigated with minimal adverse health outcomes.
Dr Gunter, for this reason, refers to it interchangeably as “the menopausal transition”. She describes it as being less like a cliff edge we fall off, and more like a bridge we cross.
Bridges can be dangerous to cross! But they can also get us safely where we’re going.
Ok, so how do we manage those things?
Dr. Gunter is a big fan of evidence-based medicine, so we’ll not be seeing any yonic crystals or jade eggs. Or “goop”.
See also: Meet Goop’s Number One Enemy
For most people, she recommends Menopausal Hormone Therapy (MHT), which falls under the more general category of Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT).
This is the most well-evidenced, science-based way to avoid most of the risks associated with menopause.
Nevertheless, there are scare-stories out there, ranging from painful recommencement of bleeding, to (once again) increased risk of breast cancer. However, most of these are either misunderstandings, or unrelated to menopause and MHT, and are rather signs of other problems that should not be ignored.
To get a good grounding in this, you might want to read her Hormone Therapy Guide, freely available as a standalone section on her website. This series of posts is dedicated to hormone therapy. It starts with some basics and builds on that knowledge with each post:
Dr. Gunter’s Guide To The Hormone Menoverse
What about natural therapies?
There are some non-hormonal things that work, but these are mostly things that:
- give a statistically significant reduction in symptoms
- give the same statistically significant reduction in symptoms as placebo
As Dr. Gunter puts it:
❝While most of the studies of prescription medications for hot flashes have an appropriate placebo arm, this is rarely the case with so-called alternative therapies.
In fact, the studies here are almost always low quality, so it’s often not possible to conclude much.
Many reviews that look at these studies often end with a line that goes something like, “Randomized trials with a placebo arm, a low risk of bias, and adequate sample sizes are urgently needed.”
You should interpret this kind of conclusion as the polite way of saying, “We need studies that aren’t BS to say something constructive.”❞
However, if it works, it works, whatever its mechanism. It’s just good, when making medical decisions, to do so with the full facts!
For that matter, even Dr. Gunter acknowledges that while MHT can be lifechanging (in a positive way) for many, it’s not for everyone:
Informed Decisions: When Menopause Hormone Therapy Isn’t Recommended
Want to know more?
Dr. Gunter also has an assortment of books available, including The Menopause Manifesto (which we’ve reviewed previously), and some others that we haven’t, such as “Blood” and “The Vagina Bible”.
Enjoy!
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Healing After Loss – by Martha Hickman
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Mental health is also just health, and this book’s about an underexamined area of mental health. We say “underexamined”, because for something that affects almost everyone sooner or later, there’s not nearly so much science being done about it as other areas of mental health.
This is not a book of science per se, but it is a very useful one. The format is:
Each calendar day of the year, there’s a daily reflection, consisting of:
- A one-liner insight about grief, quoted from somebody
- A page of thoughts about this
- A one-liner summary, often formulated as a piece of advice
The book is not religious in content, though the author does occasionally make reference to God, only in the most abstract way that shouldn’t be offputting to any but the most stridently anti-religious readers.
Bottom line: if this is a subject near to your heart, then you will almost certainly benefit from this daily reader.
Click here to check out Healing After Loss, and indeed heal after loss
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Why Curcumin (Turmeric) Is Worth Its Weight In Gold
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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:
- It fights inflammation, and thus helps fight many diseases where inflammation is a factor (ranging from atherosclerosis to arthritis to Alzheimer’s and more)
- It has powerful antioxidant effects too
- It boosts brain-derived neurotropic factor (BDNF) and thus improves memory and attention
- It helps protect against heart disease…
- …and can give a 65% decreased risk of experiencing a heart attack
- It can help prevent cancer, and reduce cancerous lesions by 40%
- It’s also good against depression
- It even slows aging
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?
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‘Free birthing’ and planned home births might sound similar but the risks are very different
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The death of premature twins in Byron Bay in an apparent “wild birth”, or free birth, last week has prompted fresh concerns about giving birth without a midwife or medical assistance.
This follows another case from Victoria this year, where a baby was born in a critical condition following a reported free birth.
It’s unclear how common free birthing is, as data is not collected, but there is some evidence free births increased during the COVID pandemic.
Planned home births also became more popular during the pandemic, as women preferred to stay away from hospitals and wanted their support people with them.
But while free births and home births might sound similar, they are a very different practice, with free births much riskier. So what’s the difference, and why might people opt for a free birth?
What are home births?
Planned home births involve care from midwives, who are registered experts in childbirth, in a woman’s home.
These registered midwives work privately, or are part of around 20 publicly funded home birth programs nationally that are attached to hospitals.
They provide care during the pregnancy, labour and birth, and in the first six weeks following the birth.
The research shows that for women with low risk pregnancies, planned home births attended by competent midwives (with links to a responsive mainstream maternity system) are safe.
Home births result in less intervention than hospital births and women perceive their experience more positively.
What are free births?
A free birth is when a woman chooses to have a baby, usually at home, without a registered health professional such as a midwife or doctor in attendance.
Different terms such as unassisted birth or wild pregnancy or birth are also used to refer to free birth.
The parents may hire an unregulated birth worker or doula to be a support at the birth but they do not have the training or medical equipment needed to manage emergencies.
Women may have limited or no health care antenatally, meaning risk factors such as twins and breech presentations (the baby coming bottom first) are not detected beforehand and given the right kind of specialist care.
Why do some people choose to free birth?
We have been studying the reasons women and their partners choose to free birth for more than a decade. We found a previous traumatic birth and/or feeling coerced into choices that are not what the woman wants were the main drivers for avoiding mainstream maternity care.
Australia’s childbirth intervention rates – for induction or augmentation of labour, episiotomy (cutting the tissue between the vaginal opening and the anus) and caesarean section – are comparatively high.
One in ten women report disrespectful or abusive care in childbirth and some decide to make different choices for future births.
Lack of options for a natural birth and birth choices such as home birth or birth centre birth also played a major role in women’s decision to free birth.
Publicly funded home birth programs have very strict criteria around who can be accepted into the program, excluding many women.
In other countries such as the United Kingdom, Netherlands and New Zealand, publicly funded home births are easier to access.
It can be difficult to access home birth services in Australia.
Ink Drop/ShutterstockOnly around 200 midwives provide private midwifery services for home births nationally. Private midwives are yet to obtain insurance for home births, which means they are risking their livelihoods if something goes wrong and they are sued.
The cost of a home birth with a private midwife is not covered by Medicare and only some health funds rebate some of the cost. This means women can be out of pocket A$6-8,000.
Access to home birth is an even greater issue in rural and remote Australia.
How to make mainstream care more inclusive
Many women feel constrained by their birth choices in Australia. After years of research and listening to thousands of women, it’s clear more can be done to reduce the desire to free birth.
As my co-authors and I outline in our book, Birthing Outside the System: The Canary in the Coal Mine, this can be achieved by:
- making respectful care a reality so women aren’t traumatised and alienated by maternity care and want to engage with it
- supporting midwifery care. Women are seeking more physiological and social ways of birthing, minimising birth interventions, and midwives are the experts in this space
- supporting women’s access to their chosen place of birth and model of care and not limiting choice with high out-of-pocket expenses
- providing more flexible, acceptable options for women experiencing risk factors during pregnancy and/or birth, such as having a previous caesarean birth, having twins or having a baby in breech position. Women experiencing these complications experience pressure to have a caesarean section
- getting the framework right with policies, guidelines, education, research, regulation and professional leadership.
Ensuring women’s rights and choices are informed and respected means they’re less likely to feel they’re left with no other option.
Hannah Dahlen, Professor of Midwifery, Associate Dean Research and HDR, Midwifery Discipline Leader, Western Sydney University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Tomatoes vs Carrots – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing tomatoes to carrots, we picked the carrots.
Why?
Both known for being vitamin-A heavyweights, there is nevertheless a clear winner:
In terms of macros, carrots have a little over 2x the carbs, and/but also a little over 2x the fiber, so we consider category this a win for carrots.
In the category of vitamins, tomatoes have more vitamin C, while carrots have more of vitamins A, B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, B9, E, K, and choline. And about that vitamin A specifically: carrots have over 20x the vitamin A of tomatoes. An easy win for carrots here!
When it comes to minerals, tomatoes have a little more copper, while carrots have more calcium, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, and zinc. Another clear win for carrots.
Looking at polyphenols, carrots are good but tomatoes have more, including a good healthy dose of quercetin; they also have more lycopene, not technically a polyphenol by virtue of its chemical structure (it’s a carotenoid), but a powerful phytochemical nonetheless (and much more prevalent in sun-dried tomatoes, in any case, which is not what we were looking at today—perhaps another day we’ll do sun-dried tomatoes and carrots head-to-head!).
Still, a) carrots are not short of carotenoids either (including lycopene), and b) we don’t think the moderate win on polyphenols is enough to outdo carrots having won all the other categories.
All in all, carrots win the day, but of course, do enjoy either or both; diversity is good!
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
Lycopene’s Benefits For The Gut, Heart, Brain, & More
Enjoy!
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