Encyclopedia Of Herbal Medicine – by Andrew Chevallier
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.
A common problem with a lot of herbal medicine is it’s “based on traditional use only”, while on the other hand, learning about the actual science of it can mean poring through stacks of Randomized Clinical Trials, half of which are paywalled.
This beautifully and clearly-illustrated book bridges that gap. It gives not just the history, but also the science, of the use of many medicinal herbs (spotlight on 100 key ones; details on 450 more).
It gives advice on growing, harvesting, processing, and using the herbs, as well as what not to do (with regard to safety). And in case you don’t fancy yourself a gardener, you’ll also find advice on places one can buy herbs, and what you’ll need to know to choose them well (controlling for quality etc).
You can read it cover-to-cover, or look up what you need by plant in its general index, or by ailment (200 common ailments listed). As for its bibliography, it does list many textbooks, but not individual papers—though it does cite 12 popular scientific journals too.
Bottom line: if you want a good, science-based, one-stop book for herbal medicine, this is a top-tier choice.
Click here to check out the Encyclopedia of Herbal Medicine, and expand your home remedy repertoire!
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:
Master Your Core – by Dr. Bohdanna Zazulak
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 category of “washboard abs”, this one isn’t particularly interested in how much or how little fat you have. What it’s more interested in is a strong, resilient, and stable core. Including your abs yes, but also glutes, hips, and back.
Nor is the focus on superhuman feats of strength, though certainly one could use these exercises to work towards that. Rather, here we see importance placed on functional performance, mobility, and stability.
Lest mobility and stability seem at odds with each other, understand:
- By mobility we mean the range of movement we are able to accomplish.
- By stability, we mean that any movement we make is intentional, and not because we lost our balance.
Functional performance, meanwhile, is a function of those two things, plus strength.
How does the book deliver on this?
There are exercises to do. Exercises of the athletic kind you might expect, and also exercises including breathing exercises, which gets quite a bit of attention too. Not just “do abdominal breathing”, but quite an in-depth examination of such. There are also habits to form, and lifestyle tweaks to make.
Of course, you don’t have to do all the things she suggests. The more you do, the better results you are likely to get, but if you adopt even some of the practices she recommends, you’re likely to see some benefits. And, perhaps most importantly, reduce age-related loss of mobility, stability, and strength.
Bottom line: a great all-rounder book of core strength, mobility, and stability.
Click here to check out Master Your Core and enjoy the more robust health that comes with it!
Share This Post
Apples vs Carrots – 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 apples to carrots, we picked the carrots.
Why?
Both are sweet crunchy snacks, both rightly considered very healthy options, but one comes out clearly on top…
Both contain lots of antioxidants, albeit mostly different ones. They’re both good for this.
Looking at their macros, however, apples have more carbs while carrots have more fiber. The carb:fiber ratio in apples is already sufficient to make them very healthy, but carrots do win.
In the category of vitamins, carrots have many times more of vitamins A, B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, B9, C, E, K, and choline. Apples are not higher in any vitamins.
In terms of minerals, carrots have a lot more calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, and zinc. Apples are not higher in any minerals.
If “an apple a day keeps the doctor away”, what might a carrot a day do?
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
Sugar: From Apples to Bees, and High-Fructose C’s
Take care!
Share This Post
We Hope This Email Blows Your Tits Clean Off
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 Right Kind Of “Email Hacks”!
Are you a Gmailer or an Outlookista? Whatever your preference, you’re probably facing many of the same challenges that most of us face in our work and personal lives:
Email’s greatest strength (its ease of accessibility) brings about its greatest problem (our inboxes are cluttered and chaotic), not to mention that each of us are usually managing a whole flock of email addresses.
Sometimes we put productivity resources up against each other; that’s not what we’re going to do today! Each of these can play a role alongside each other; grab as many as will make your life easier:
ProtonMail: this is an email client; it’s the nicest, simplest, easiest, free email client that doesn’t track, let alone share, everything you do.
Bonus: there also exists ProtonCalendar (it’s a calendar that doesn’t share your data), ProtonDrive (it’s a cloud storage provider that doesn’t share your data) and, because they’re indeed serious about your privacy, ProtonVPN (it’s a VPN that, of course, doesn’t share your data).
Clean Email: maybe you’re stuck with the email provider you have. It happens. But it doesn’t have to be a chaotic mess. This tool will make tidying your email (and keeping it tidy!) a simplified dream.
See How Clean Your Email Can Get With Just A Few Clicks!
Right Inbox: a Gmail extension with many useful features, including read receipts, emails scheduled for later (e.g: time your email to send at 7am to look like a morning lark when in fact you’re peacefully snoozing), add unforwardable “For Your Eyes Only” notes to emails, and more.
Power Up Your Gmail With The Right Inbox Extension!
Email Finder: find the verified work email address of any person, so long as you know what company you’re looking for them in! No more “I thought it was lastname.firstname@ and it was firstname.lastname@”, no more “the wrong John Smith”, no more “undelivered” bounceback notices. Just: your email delivered.
Never Hear From The Mailer Daemon Again, With Email Finder!
Unroll.me: love your subscriptions, but hate the clutter? Unroll.me aggregates them for you in a virtual roll-up, with an “unroll” button to read them.
Get What You Really Want From Your Subscriptions, With Unroll.Me!
On which note, anything you’d like to hear more of from us? Let us know! You can always just hit reply, or use the feedback widget at the bottom of this email
Share This Post
Related Posts
Making Friends With Your Gut (You Can Thank Us Later)
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.
Gut Health 101
We have so many microorganisms inside us, that by cell count, their cells outnumber ours more than ten-to-one. By gene count, we have 23,000 and they have more than 3,000,000. In effect, we are more microbe than we are human. And, importantly: they form a critical part of what keeps our overall organism ticking on.
Read all about it: The role of the gut microbiota in nutrition and health
Our trillions of tiny friends keep us alive, so it really really pays to return the favor.
But how?
Probiotics and fermented foods
You probably guessed this one, but it’d be remiss not to mention it first. It’s no surprise that probiotics help; the clue is in the name. In short, they help add diversity to your microbiome (that’s a good thing).
Read from the NIH: Probiotics: What You Need To Know
As for fermented foods, not every fermented food will boost your microbiota, but great options include…
- Fermented vegetables (sauerkraut, pickles, etc)
- You’ll often hear kimchi mentioned; that is also pickled vegetables, usually mostly cabbage. It’s just the culinary experience that differs. Unlike sauerkraut, kimchi is usually spiced, for example.
- Kombucha (a fermented sweet tea)
- Miso & tempeh (different preparations of fermented soy)
The health benefits vary based on the individual strains of bacteria involved in the fermentation, so don’t get too caught up on which is best.
The best one is the one you enjoy, because then you’ll have it regularly!
Feed them plenty of prebiotic fibers
Those probiotics you took? The bacteria in them eat the fiber that you can’t digest without them. So, feed them those sorts of fibers.
Great options include:
- Bananas
- Garlic
- Onions
- Whole grains
Read more: Effects of Probiotics, Prebiotics, and Synbiotics on Human Health
Don’t feed them sugar and sweeteners
Sugar and (and, counterintuitively, aspartame) can cause unfortunate gut microbe imbalances. Put simply, they kill some of your friends and feed some of your enemies. For example…
Candida, which we all have in us to some degree, feeds on sugar (including the sugar formed from breaking down alcohol, by the way) and refined carbs. Then it grows, and puts its roots through your intestinal walls, linking with your neural system. Then it makes you crave the very things that will feed it and allow it to put bigger holes in your intestinal walls.
Do not feed the Candida.
Don’t believe us? Read: Candida albicans-Induced Epithelial Damage Mediates Translocation through Intestinal Barriers
(That’s scientist-speak for “Candida puts holes in your intestines, and stuff can then go through those holes”)
And as for how that comes about, it’s like we said:
❝Colonization of the intestine and translocation through the intestinal barrier are fundamental aspects of the processes preceding life-threatening systemic candidiasis. In this review, we discuss the commensal lifestyle of C. albicans in the intestine, the role of morphology for commensalism, the influence of diet, and the interactions with bacteria of the microbiota.❞
Source: Candida albicans as a commensal and opportunistic pathogen in the intestine
The usual five things
- Good diet (Mediterranean Diet is good; plant-based version of it is by far the best for this)
- Good exercise (yes, really)
- Good sleep (helps them, and they’ll help you get better sleep in return)
- Limit or eliminate alcohol consumption (what a shocker)
- Don’t smoke (it’s bad for everything, including gut health)
One last thing you should know:
If you’re used to having animal products in your diet, and make a sudden change to all plants, your gut will object very strongly. This is because your gut microbiome is used to animal products, and a plant-based diet will cause many helpful microbes to flourish in great abundance, and many less helpful microbes will starve and die. And they will make it officially Not Fun™ for you.
So, you have two options to consider:
- Do it anyway, and sit it out (and believe us, you’ll be sitting), get the change over with quickly, and enjoy the benefits and much happier gut that follows.
- Make the change gradual. Reduce portions of animal products slowly, have “Meatless Mondays” etc, and slowly make the change over. This—for most people—is pretty comfortable, easy, and effective.
And remember: the effects of these things we’ve talked about today compound when you do more than one of them, but if you don’t want to take probiotics or really hate kombucha or absolutely won’t consider a plant-based diet or struggle to give up sugar or alcohol, etc… Just do what you can do, and you’ll still have a net improvement!
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:
- Fermented vegetables (sauerkraut, pickles, etc)
Can You Reverse Gray Hair? A Dermatologist Explains
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.
Betteridge’s Law of Headlines states “any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no“—it’s not really a universal truth, but it’s true surprisingly often, and, as board certified dermatologist “The Beauty MD” Dr. Sam Ellis explains, it’s true in this case.
But, all is not lost.
Physiological Factors
Hair color is initially determined by genes and gene expression, instructing the body to color it with melanin (brown and black) and/or pheomelanin (blonde and red). If and when the body produces less of those pigments, our hair will go gray.
Factors that affect if/when our hair will go gray include:
- Genetics: primary determinant, essentially a programmed change
- Age: related to the above, but critically, the probability of going gray in any given year increases with age
- Ethnicity: the level of melanin in our skin is an indicator of how long we are likely to maintain melanin in our hair. Black people with the darkest skintones will thus generally go gray last, whereas white people with the lightest skintones will generally go gray first, and so on for a spectrum between the two.
- Medical conditions: immune conditions such as vitiligo, thyroid disease, and pernicious anemia promote an earlier loss of pigmentation
- Stress: oxidative stress, mainly, so factors like smoking will cause earlier graying. But yes, also chronic emotional stress does lead to oxidative stress too. Interestingly, this seems to be more about norepinephrine than cortisol, though.
- Nutrient deficiencies: the body can make a lot of things, but it needs the raw ingredients. Not having the right amounts of important vitamins and minerals will result in a loss of pigmentation (amongst other more serious problems). Vitamins B6, B9, and B12 are talked about in the video, as are iron and zinc. Copper is also needed for some hair colors. Selenium is needed for good hair health in general (but not too much, as an excess of selenium paradoxically causes hair loss), and many related things will stop working properly without adequate magnesium. Hair health will also benefit a lot from plenty of vitamin B7.
So, managing the above factors (where possible; obviously some of the above aren’t things we can influence) will result in maintaining one’s hair pigment for longer. As for texture, by the way, the reason gray hair tends to have a rougher texture is not for the lack of pigment itself, but is due to decreased sebum production. Judicious use of exogenous hair oils (e.g. argan oil, coconut oil, or whatever your preference may be) is a fine way to keep your grays conditioned.
However, once your hair has gone gray, there is no definitive treatment with good evidence for reversing that, at present. Dye it if you want to, or don’t. Many people (including this writer, who has just a couple of streaks of gray herself) find gray hair gives a distinguished look, and such harmless signs of age are a privilege not everyone gets to reach, and thus may be reasonably considered a cause for celebration
For more on all of the above, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
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:
5 dental TikTok trends you probably shouldn’t try at home
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.
TikTok is full of videos that demonstrate DIY hacks, from up-cycling tricks to cooking tips. Meanwhile, a growing number of TikTok videos offer tips to help you save money and time at the dentist. But do they deliver?
Here are five popular dental TikTok trends and why you might treat them with caution.
1. Home-made whitening solutions
Many TikTok videos provide tips to whiten teeth. These include tutorials on making your own whitening toothpaste using ingredients such as hydrogen peroxide, a common household bleaching agent, and baking soda (sodium bicarbonate).
In this video, the influencer says:
And then you’re going to pour in your hydrogen peroxide. There’s really no measurement to this.
But hydrogen peroxide in high doses is poisonous if swallowed, and can burn your gums, mouth and throat, and corrode your teeth.
High doses of hydrogen peroxide may infiltrate holes or microscopic cracks in your teeth to inflame or damage the nerves and blood vessels in the teeth, which can cause pain and even nerve death. This is why dental practitioners are bound by rules when we offer whitening treatments.
Sodium bicarbonate and hydrogen peroxide are among the components in commercially available whitening toothpastes. While these commercial products may be effective at removing surface stains, their compositions are carefully curated to keep your smile safe.
2. Oil pulling
Oil pulling involves swishing one tablespoon of sesame or coconut oil in your mouth for up to 20 minutes at a time. It has roots in Ayurvedic medicine, a traditional medicine practice that originates from the Indian subcontinent.
While oil pulling should be followed by brushing and flossing, I’ve had patients who believe oil pulling is a replacement for these practices.
There has been some research on the potential of oil pulling to treat gum disease or other diseases in the mouth. But overall, evidence that supports the effectiveness of oil pulling is of low certainty.
For example, studies that test the effectiveness of oil pulling have been conducted on school-aged children and people with no dental problems, and often measure dental plaque growth over a few days to a couple of weeks.
Chlorhexidine is an ingredient found in some commercially available mouthwashes.
In one study, people who rinsed with chlorhexidine mouthwash (30 seconds twice daily) developed less plaque on their teeth compared to those who undertook oil pulling for eight to 10 minutes.Ultimately, it’s unlikely you will experience measurable gain to your oral health by adding oil pulling to your daily routine. If you’re time-poor, you’re better off focusing on brushing your teeth and gums well alongside flossing.
3. Using rubber bands to fix gaps
This TikTok influencer shows his followers he closed the gaps between his front teeth in a week using cheap clear rubber bands.
But this person may be one of the lucky few to successfully use bands to close a gap in his teeth without any mishaps. Front teeth are slippery and taper near the gums into cone-shaped roots. This can cause bands to slide and disappear into the gums to surround the tooth roots, which can cause infections and pain.
If this happens, you may require surgery that involves cutting your gums to remove the bands. If the bands have caused an infection, you may lose the affected teeth. So it’s best to leave this sort of work to a dental professional trained in orthodontics.
4. Filing or cutting teeth to shape them
My teeth hurt just watching this video.
Cutting or filing teeth unnecessarily can expose the second, more sensitive tooth layer, called dentine, or potentially, the nerve and blood vessels inside the tooth. People undergoing this sort of procedure could experience anything from sensitive teeth through to a severe toothache that requires root canal treatment or tooth removal.
You may notice dentist drills spray water when cutting to protect your teeth from extreme heat damage. The drill in this video is dry with no water used to cool the heat produced during cutting.
It may also not be sterile. We like to have everything clean and sterile to prevent contaminated instruments used on one patient from potentially spreading an infection to another person.
Importantly, once you cut or file your teeth away, it’s gone forever. Unlike bone, hair or nails, our teeth don’t have the capacity to regrow.
5. DIY fillings
Many people on TikTok demonstrate filling cavities (holes) or replacing gaps between teeth with a material made from heated moulded plastic beads. DIY fillings can cause a lot of issues – I’ve seen this in my clinic first hand.
While we may make it look simple in dental surgeries, the science behind filling materials and how we make them stick to teeth to fill cavities is sophisticated.
Filling a cavity with the kind of material made from these beads will be as effective as using sticky tape on sand. Not to mention the cavity will continue to grow bigger underneath the untreated “filled” teeth.
I know it’s easy to say “see a dentist about that cavity” or “go to an orthodontist to fix that gap in your teeth you don’t like”, but it can be expensive to actually do these things. However if you end up requiring treatment to fix the issues caused at home, it may end up costing you much more.
So what’s the take-home message? Stick with the funny cat and dog videos on TikTok – they’re safer for your smile.
Arosha Weerakoon, Senior Lecturer and General Dentist, School of Dentistry, 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:
