For women with antenatal depression, micronutrients might help them and their babies – new study

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Julia J Rucklidge, University of Canterbury; Elena Moltchanova, University of Canterbury; Roger Mulder, University of Otago, and Siobhan A Campbell, University of Canterbury

Antenatal depression affects 15% to 21% of pregnant women worldwide. It can influence birth outcomes and children’s development, as well as increase the risk of post-natal depression.

Current treatments like therapy can be inaccessible and antidepressants can carry risks for developing infants.

Over the past two decades, research has highlighted that poor nutrition is a contributing risk factor to mental health challenges. Most pregnant women in New Zealand aren’t adhering to nutritional guidelines, according to a longitudinal study. Only 3% met the recommendations for all food groups.

Another cohort study carried out in Brazil shows that ultra-processed foods (UPF) accounted for at least 30% of daily dietary energy during pregnancy, displacing healthier options.

UPFs are chemically manufactured and contain additives to improve shelf life, as well as added sugar and salt. Importantly, they are low in essential micronutrients (vitamins and minerals).

The consumption of these foods is concerning because a nutrient-poor diet during pregnancy has been linked to poorer mental health outcomes in children. This includes depression, anxiety, hyperactivity, and inattention.

Increasing nutrients in maternal diets and reducing consumption of UPFs could improve the mental health of the mother and the next generation. Good nutrition can have lifelong benefits for the offspring.

However, there are multiple factors that mean diet change alone may not in itself be sufficient to address mental health challenges. Supplementing with additional nutrients may also be important to address nutritional needs during pregnancy.

Micronutrients as treatment for depression

Our earlier research suggests micronutrient supplements for depression have benefits outside pregnancy.

But until now there have been no published randomised controlled trials specifically designed to assess the efficacy and safety of broad-spectrum micronutrients on antenatal depression and overall functioning.

The NUTRIMUM trial, which ran between 2017 and 2022, recruited 88 women in their second trimester of pregnancy who reported moderate depressive symptoms. They were randomly allocated to receive either 12 capsules (four pills, three times a day) of a broad-spectrum micronutrient supplement or an active placebo containing iodine and riboflavin for a 12-week period.

Micronutrient doses were generally between the recommended dietary allowance and the tolerable upper level.

Based on clinician ratings, micronutrients significantly improved overall psychological functioning compared to the placebo. The findings took into account all noted changes based on self-assessment and clinician observations. This includes sleep, mood regulation, coping, anxiety and side effects.

Pregnant woman looking out a window
Adding micronutrients to the diet of pregnant women with antenatal depression significantly improved their overall psychological functioning. Getty Images

Both groups reported similar reductions in symptoms of depression. More than three quarters of participants were in remission at the end of the trial. But 69% of participants in the micronutrient group rated themselves as “much” or “very much” improved, compared to 39% in the placebo group.

Participants taking the micronutrients also experienced significantly greater improvements in sleep and overall day-to-day functioning, compared to participants taking the placebo. There were no group differences on measures of stress, anxiety and quality of life.

Importantly, there were no group differences in reported side effects, and reports of suicidal thoughts dropped over the course of the study for both groups. Blood tests confirmed increased vitamin levels (vitamin C, D, B12) and fewer deficiencies in the micronutrient group.

Micronutrients were particularly helpful for women with chronic mental health challenges and those who had taken psychiatric medications in the past. Those with milder symptoms improved with or without the micronutrients, suggesting general care and monitoring might suffice for some women.

The benefits of micronutrients were comparable to psychotherapy but with less contact. There are no randomised controlled trials of antidepressant medication to compare these results.

Retention in the study was good (81%) and compliance excellent (90%).

Beyond maternal mental health

We followed the infants of mothers enrolled in the NUTRIMUM trial (who were therefore exposed to micronutrients during pregnancy) for 12 months, alongside infants from the general population of Aotearoa New Zealand.

This second group of infants from the general population contained a smaller sub-group who were exposed to antidepressant medication for the treatment of antenatal depression.

We assessed the neuro-behavioural development of each infant within the first four weeks of life, and temperament up to one year after birth.

These observational follow-ups showed positive effects of micronutrients on the infants’ ability to regulate their behaviour. These results were on par with or better than typical pregnancies, and better than treatments with antidepressants.

Baby eats fruits and berries with their hand
Micronutrients during pregnancy improved the neurological and behavioural development of infants. Getty Images

Infants exposed to micronutrients during pregnancy were significantly better at attending to external stimuli. They were also better able to block out external stimuli during sleep. They showed fewer signs of stress and had better muscle tone compared to infants not exposed to micronutrients.

They also displayed greater ability to interact with their environment. They were better at regulating their emotional state and had fewer abnormal muscle reflexes than infants exposed to antidepressant medication in pregnancy.

Reassuringly, micronutrients had no negative impact on infant temperament.

These findings highlight the potential of micronutrients as a safe and effective alternative to traditional medication treatments for antenatal depression.

The prenatal environment sets the foundation for a child’s future. Further investigation into the benefits of micronutrient supplementation would gives us more confidence in their use for other perinatal (from the start of pregnancy to a year after birth) mental health issues. This could provide future generations with a better start to life.

We would like to acknowledge the contribution of Dr Hayley Bradley to this research project.

Julia J Rucklidge, Professor of Psychology, University of Canterbury; Elena Moltchanova, Professor of Statistics, University of Canterbury; Roger Mulder, Professor of Psychiatry, University of Otago, and Siobhan A Campbell, Intern Psychologist, Researcher – Te Puna Toiora (Mental Health and Nutrition Research Lab), University of Canterbury

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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  • Stress Resets – by Dr. Jennifer Taitz

    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.

    You may be thinking: “that’s a bold claim in the subtitle; does the book deliver?”

    And yes, yes it does.

    The “resets” themselves are divided into categories:

    1. Mind resets, which are mostly CBT,
    2. Body resets, which include assorted somatic therapies such as vagus nerve resets, the judicious use of ice-water, what 1-minute sprints of exercise can do for your mental state, and why not to use the wrong somatic therapy for the wrong situation!
    3. Behavior resets, which are more about the big picture, and not falling into common traps.

    What common traps, you ask? This is about how we often have maladaptive responses to stress, e.g. we’re short of money so we overspend, we have an important deadline so we over-research and procrastinate, we’re anxious so we hyperfixate on the problem, we’re grieving so we look to substances to try to cope, we’re exhausted so we stay up late to try to claw back some lost time. Things where our attempt to cope actually makes things worse for us.

    Instead, Dr. Taitz advises us of how to get ourselves from “knowing we shouldn’t do that” to actually not doing that, and how to respond more healthily to stress, how to turn general stress into eustress, or as she puts it, how to “turn your knots into bows”.

    The style is… “Academic light”, perhaps we could say. It’s a step above pop-science, but a step below pure academic literature, which does make it a very pleasant read as well as informative. There are often footnotes at the bottom of each page to bridge any knowledge-gap, and for those who want to know the evidence of these evidence-based approaches, she does provide 35 pages of hard science sources to back up her claims.

    Bottom line: if you’d like to learn how better to manage stress from an evidence-based perspective that’s not just “do minfdulness meditation”, then this book gives a lot of ways.

    Click here to check out Stress Resets, and indeed soothe your body and mind in minutes!

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  • As Nuns Disappear, Many Catholic Hospitals Look More Like Megacorporations

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    ST. LOUIS — Inside the more than 600 Catholic hospitals across the country, not a single nun can be found occupying a chief executive suite, according to the Catholic Health Association.

    Nuns founded and led those hospitals in a mission to treat sick and poor people, but some were also shrewd business leaders. Sister Irene Kraus, a former chief executive of Daughters of Charity National Health System, was famous for coining the phrase “no margin, no mission.” It means hospitals must succeed — generating enough revenue to exceed expenses — to fulfill their original mission.

    The Catholic Church still governs the care that can be delivered to millions in those hospitals each year, using religious directives to ban abortions and limit contraceptives, in vitro fertilization, and medical aid in dying.

    But over time, that focus on margins led the hospitals to transform into behemoths that operate for-profit subsidiaries and pay their executives millions, according to hospital tax filings. These institutions, some of which are for-profit companies, now look more like other megacorporations than like the charities for the destitute of yesteryear.

    The absence of nuns in the top roles raises the question, said M. Therese Lysaught, a Catholic moral theologist and professor at Loyola University Chicago: “What does it mean to be a Catholic hospital when the enterprise has been so deeply commodified?”

    The St. Louis area serves as the de facto capital of Catholic hospital systems. Three of the largest are headquartered here, along with the Catholic hospital lobbying arm. Catholicism is deeply rooted in the region’s culture. During Pope John Paul II’s only U.S. stop in 1999, he led Mass downtown in a packed stadium of more than 100,000 people.

    For a quarter century, Sister Mary Jean Ryan led SSM Health, one of those giant systems centered on St. Louis. Now retired, the 86-year-old said she was one of the last nuns in the nation to lead a Catholic hospital system.

    Ryan grew up Catholic in Wisconsin and joined a convent while in nursing school in the 1960s, surprising her family. She admired the nuns she worked alongside and felt they were living out a higher purpose.

    “They were very impressive,” she said. “Not that I necessarily liked all of them.”

    Indeed, the nuns running hospitals defied the simplistic image often ascribed to them, wrote John Fialka in his book “Sisters: Catholic Nuns and the Making of America.”

    “Their contributions to American culture are not small,” he wrote. “Ambitious women who had the skills and the stamina to build and run large institutions found the convent to be the first and, for a long time, the only outlet for their talents.”

    This was certainly true for Ryan, who climbed the ranks, working her way from nurse to chief executive of SSM Health, which today has hospitals in Illinois, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Wisconsin.

    The system was founded more than a century ago when five German nuns arrived in St. Louis with $5. Smallpox swept through the city and the Sisters of St. Mary walked the streets offering free care to the sick.

    Their early foray grew into one of the largest Catholic health systems in the country, with annual revenue exceeding $10 billion, according to its 2023 audited financial report. SSM Health treats patients in 23 hospitals and co-owns a for-profit pharmacy benefit manager, Navitus, that coordinates prescriptions for 14 million people.

    But Ryan, like many nuns in leadership roles in recent decades, found herself confronted with an existential crisis. As fewer women became nuns, she had to ensure the system’s future without them.

    When Ron Levy, who is Jewish, started at SSM as an administrator, he declined to lead a prayer in a meeting, Ryan recounted in her book, “On Becoming Exceptional.”

    “Ron, I’m not asking you to be Catholic,” she recalled telling him. “And I know you’ve only been here two weeks. So, if you’d like to make it three, I suggest you be prepared to pray the next time you’re asked.”

    Levy went on to serve SSM for more than 30 years — praying from then on, Ryan wrote.

    In Catholic hospitals, meetings are still likely to start with a prayer. Crucifixes often adorn buildings and patient rooms. Mission statements on the walls of SSM facilities remind patients: “We reveal the healing presence of God.”

    Above all else, the Catholic faith calls on its hospitals to treat everyone regardless of race, religion, or ability to pay, said Diarmuid Rooney, a vice president of the Catholic Health Association. No nuns run the trade group’s member hospitals, according to the lobbying group. But the mission that compelled the nuns is “what compels us now,” Rooney said. “It’s not just words on a wall.”

    The Catholic Health Association urges its hospitals to evaluate themselves every three years on whether they’re living up to Catholic teachings. It created a tool that weighs seven criteria, including how a hospital acts as an extension of the church and cares for poor and marginalized patients.

    “We’re not relying on hearsay that the Catholic identity is alive and well in our facilities and hospitals,” Rooney said. “We can actually see on a scale where they are at.”

    The association does not share the results with the public.

    At SSM Health, “our Catholic identity is deeply and structurally ingrained” even with no nun at the helm, spokesperson Patrick Kampert said. The system reports to two boards. One functions as a typical business board of directors while the other ensures the system abides by the rules of the Catholic Church. The church requires the majority of that nine-member board to be Catholic. Three nuns currently serve on it; one is the chair.

    Separately, SSM also is required to file an annual report with the Vatican detailing the ways, Kampert said, “we deepen our Catholic identity and further the healing ministry of Jesus.” SSM declined to provide copies of those reports.

    From a business perspective, though, it’s hard to distinguish a Catholic hospital system like SSM from a secular one, said Ruth Hollenbeck, a former Anthem insurance executive who retired in 2018 after negotiating Missouri hospital contracts. In the contracts, she said, the difference amounted to a single paragraph stating that Catholic hospitals wouldn’t do anything contrary to the church’s directives.

    To retain tax-exempt status under Internal Revenue Service rules, all nonprofit hospitals must provide a “benefit” to their communities such as free or reduced-price care for patients with low incomes. But the IRS provides a broad definition of what constitutes a community benefit, which gives hospitals wide latitude to justify not needing to pay taxes.

    On average, the nation’s nonprofit hospitals reported that 15.5% of their total annual expenses were for community benefits in 2020, the latest figure available from the American Hospital Association.

    SSM Health, including all of its subsidiaries, spent proportionately far less than the association’s average for individual hospitals, allocating roughly the same share of its annual expenses to community efforts over three years: 5.1% in 2020, 4.5% in 2021, and 4.9% in 2022, according to a KFF Health News analysis of its most recent publicly available IRS filings and audited financial statements.

    A separate analysis from the Lown Institute think tank placed five Catholic systems — including the St. Louis region’s Ascension — on its list of the 10 health systems with the largest “fair share” deficits, which means receiving more in tax breaks than what they spent on the community. And Lown said three St. Louis-area Catholic health systems — Ascension, SSM Health, and Mercy — had fair share deficits of $614 million, $235 million, and $92 million, respectively, in the 2021 fiscal year.

    Ascension, Mercy, and SSM disputed Lown’s methodology, arguing it doesn’t take into account the gap between the payments they receive for Medicaid patients and the cost of delivering their care. The IRS filings do.

    But, Kampert said, many of the benefits SSM provides aren’t reflected in its IRS filings either. The forms reflect “very simplistic calculations” and do not accurately represent the health system’s true impact on the community, he said.

    Today, SSM Health is led by longtime business executive Laura Kaiser. Her compensation in 2022 totaled $8.4 million, including deferred payments, according to its IRS filing. Kampert defended the amount as necessary “to retain and attract the most qualified” candidate.

    By contrast, SSM never paid Ryan a salary, giving instead an annual contribution to her convent of less than $2 million a year, according to some tax filings from her long tenure. “I didn’t join the convent to earn money,” Ryan 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.

    This article first appeared on KFF Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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  • ADHD For Smart Ass Women – by Tracy Otsuka

    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 books about ADHD in adults before, what makes this one different? It’s the wholly female focus. Which is not to say some things won’t apply to men too, they will.

    But while most books assume a male default unless it’s “bikini zone” health issues, this one is written by a woman for women focusing on the (biological and social) differences in ADHD for us.

    A strength of the book is that it neither seeks to:

    • over-medicalize things in a way that any deviation from the norm is inherently bad and must be fixed, nor
    • pretend that everything’s a bonus, that we are superpowered and beautiful and perfect and capable and have no faults that might ever need addressing actually

    …instead, it gives a good explanation of the ins and outs of ADHD in women, the strengths and weaknesses that this brings, and good solid advice on how to play to the strengths and reduce (or at least work around) the weaknesses.

    Bottom line: this book has been described as “ADHD 2.0 (a very popular book that we’ve reviewed previously), but for women”, and it deserves that.

    Click here to check out ADHD for Smart Ass Women, and fall in love with your neurodivergent brain!

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  • The Lifestyle Factors That Matter >8 Times More Than Genes

    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 said before that “genes predispose; they don’t predetermine”. It can be good to know one’s genes, of course, and we’ve written about this here:

    Genetic Testing: Health Benefits & Methods

    …which can include some quite contemporary risks, such as:

    Genetic Risk Factors For Long COVID

    And yet…

    Nurture Over Nature

    A very large (n=492,567) study looked into the impact of 25 lifestyle/environmental factors, of which 23 are considered modifiable, and found that lifestyle/environmental factors accounted for 17% of the variation in mortality risk, while genetic predisposition accounted for less than 2%.

    Which is good news, because it means we can improve our lot.

    But how?

    The strongest negative factors (that increased mortality the most) were:

    • Smoking
    • Not owning your home (interestingly, “live in accommodation rent-free vs own” performed just as badly as various kinds of “renting home vs own”, while “own house with mortgage, vs own outright” had only a marginal negative effect)
    • Sleeping more than 9 hours per day (performed even worse than sleeping under 7 hours per day, which also increased mortality risk, but not by as much as oversleeping)
    • Financial difficulties in the past two years
    • Homosexuality
    • Unemployment
    • Being an evening person
    • Lonely lifestyle
    • Frequent napping

    We may hypothesize that homosexuality probably makes the list because of how it makes one more likely to have other items on the list, especially unemployment, and the various poverty-related indicators that come from unemployment.

    Being an evening person, whatever its pathology, is a well-established risk factor that we’ve talked about before:

    Early Bird Or Night Owl? Genes vs Environment ← this is also, by the way, an excellent example of how “genes predispose; they don’t predetermine”, because there is a genetic factor involved, and/but we absolutely can switch it up, if we go about it correctly, and become a morning person without trying to force it.

    The strongest positive factors (that decreased mortality the most) were:

    • The inverse of all of the various above things, e.g. never having smoked, owning your own home, etc
    • Household income, specifically
    • Living with a partner
    • Having oil central heating
    • Gym use
    • Sun protection use
    • Physical activity, especially if in leisure time rather than as part of one’s work
    • Glucosamine supplements
    • Family visit frequency
    • Cereal fiber intake (i.e. whole grains)

    We may hypothesize that having oil central heating is simply a more expensive option to install than many, and therefore likely one enjoyed by homeowners more often than renters.

    We may hypothesize that glucosamine supplementation is an indication of the type of person who takes care of a specific condition (inflammation of the joints) without an existential threat; notably, multivitamin supplements don’t get the same benefit, probably because of their ubiquity.

    We may hypothesize that “family visit frequency” is highly correlated to having a support network, being social (and thus not lonely), and likely is associated with household income too.

    You can see the full list of factors and their impacts, here:

    Environmental architecture of mortality in the UKB ← that’s the UK Biobank

    You can read the paper in full, here:

    Integrating the environmental and genetic architectures of aging and mortality

    Practical takeaways

    The priorities seem to be as follows:

    Don’t smoke. Ideally you will never have smoked, but short of a time machine, you can’t change that now, so: what you can do is quit now if you haven’t already.

    See also: Which Addiction-Quitting Methods Work Best?

    Note that other factors often lumped in with such, for example daily alcohol consumption, red meat intake, processed meat intake, and salt intake, all significantly increased mortality risk, but none of them in the same league of badness as smoking.

    See also: Is Sugar The New Smoking? ← simply put: no, it is not. Don’t get us wrong; added sugar is woeful for the health, but smoking is pretty much the worst thing you can do for your health, short of intentionally (and successfully) committing suicide.

    Be financially secure, ideally owning your own home. For many (indeed, for most people in the world) this may be an “easier said than done” thing, but if you can make decisions that will improve your financial security, the mortality numbers are very clear on this matter.

    Be social, as loneliness indeed kills, in numerous ways. Loneliness means a lack of a support network, and it means a lack of social contact (thus increased risk of cognitive decline), and likely decreased ikigai, unless your life’s purpose is something inherently linked to solitude (e.g. the “meditating on top of a mountain” archetype).

    See also: What Loneliness Does To Your Brain And Body

    And to fix it: How To Beat Loneliness & Isolation

    Be active: especially in your leisure time; being active because you have to does convey benefits, but on the same level as physical activity because you want to.

    See also: No-Exercise Exercises (That Won’t Feel Like “Having To Do” Exercise)

    Use sunscreen: we’re surprised this one made the list; it’s important to avoid skin cancer of course, but we didn’t think it’d be quite such a driver of mortality risk mitigation as the numbers show it is, and we can’t think of a clear alternative explanation, as we could with some of the other “why did this make the list?” items. At worst, it could be a similar case to that of glucosamine use, and thus is a marker of a conscientious person making a regular sustained effort for their health. Either way, it seems like a good idea based on the numbers.

    See also: Do We Need Sunscreen In Winter, Really?

    Enjoy whole grains: fiber is super-important, and that mustn’t be underestimated!

    See also: What Matters Most For Your Heart? ← hint: it isn’t about salt intake or fat

    And, for that matter: The Best Kind Of Fiber For Overall Health?

    Take care!

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  • Cashew & Chickpea Balti

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    When it comes to curries, the humble balti is perhaps the best when you don’t have all day to let something simmer. Filled with healthful spices, this one also comes complete with lots of fiber as well as healthy proteins and fats, with most of its calories coming from the nuts themselves, and the haricot paste base makes for a deliciously creamy curry without having to add anything unhealthy.

    You will need

    • 1 cup cashews, soaked in warm water for at least 5 minutes, and drained (if allergic, omit)
    • 1 can chickpeas (keep the water)
    • 1 can haricot beans (keep the water)
    • 1 can crushed tomatoes
    • 2 medium (or 3 small) red onions, sliced
    • red or green chilis, quantity per your preference re heat, chopped
    • ½ bulb garlic, crushed
    • ½ oz fresh ginger, peeled and finely chopped
    • 1 tbsp tomato paste
    • 1 tbsp garam masala
    • 1 tbsp ground coriander
    • 1 tbsp black pepper, coarse ground
    • 2 tsp turmeric
    • 1 tsp mustard seeds (if allergic, omit)
    • 1 tsp sweet cinnamon
    • 1 tsp coriander seeds
    • ½ tsp MSG or 1 tsp low-sodium salt
    • Avocado oil, for frying (extra virgin olive-oil, or cold-pressed coconut oil, are fine alternatives)
    • Garnish: handful fresh cilantro, chopped (or parsley, if you have the “cilantro tastes like soap” gene)

    Method

    (we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)

    1) Heat a little oil in a large sauté pan (we’re going to need space to work; a large wok is traditional but a sauté pan is convenient), and add the garlic, ginger, mustard seeds, and coriander seeds, stirring for about 2 minutes, then add the onions and chilis, stirring for another 3 minutes. The onions and chilis won’t be fully cooked yet, but that’s fine, we just needed to get them started.

    2) Add the crushed tomatoes, stirring them in, and when they get to temperature, turn the heat down to a simmer.

    3) Add the chickpeas to the pan, but separately put the chickpea water into a high-speed blender.

    4) Add the haricot beans, including the water they came in, to the high-speed blender, as well as the tomato paste and the remaining spices (including the MSG or salt), and blend on high until smooth. Add the curry paste (that’s what you’ve just made in the blender) to the pan, and stir in well.

    5) Add the cashews, stirring in well. Taste, and adjust any spices if necessary for your liking. If the onions still aren’t fully cooked, let them simmer until they are, but it shouldn’t take long.

    10almonds tip: if perchance you made it too spicy, you can add a little lime juice and the acidity will counteract the heat. Adding lemon juice, lime juice, or some kind of vinegar (depending on what works with the flavor profile of your recipe) is a good last resort to have up your sleeve for fixing a dish that got too spicy.

    6) Add the garnish, and serve—we recommend serving it with our Tasty Versatile Rice, but any carb is fine.

    Enjoy!

    Want to learn more?

    For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:

    Take care!

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  • 21% Stronger Bones in a Year at 62? Yes, It’s Possible (No Calcium Supplements Needed!)

    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.

    Bone density is a concern for a lot of people past a certain age, and it can lead to an endless juggling of vitamin and mineral supplements to try to get the right balance. Sachiaki Takamiya advocates for a natural diet- and exercise-based approach instead, showing good results with his Okinawan-influenced Blue Zones diet and lifestyle.

    As a caveat, he has not gone through menopause, so this video does completely overlook the implications of that. Nevertheless, even if some of us must get our hormones from a bottle these days, this diet and exercise approach is a very good foundation and the advice here is important for all—we can take all the estrogen we need and still have weak bones if our diet and exercise aren’t there as needed.

    From strength to strength

    Sachiaki Takamiya’s bone density wasn’t bad the previous year, but this year it is better, hitting 123.4%. This is important information, because it’s easier to achieve an n% increase (for any given value of n) if your starting point is lower. For example, a 50% increase from 1g is 1.5g (so, 0.5g difference), whereas a 50% increase from 20g is 30g (so, a 10g difference). Since his starting value was high, this makes his 21% rise particularly noteworthy—and mean that a reader with a lower starting value will most likely see even better gains, if implementing this protocol.

    You may be wondering: isn’t a bone mass density of 123.4% about 23.4% more than we want it? And the answer is that the 100% value is taken from an average peak bone mass in young adults, so having it at 100% is fine, and having it a bit higher is still better—it just means he’s outclassing healthy young adults, less likely to break a bone if he falls, etc.

    As for what he ate: he focused on getting calcium and magnesium, as well as vitamins D and K2, all from food sources. Key foods included small fish (sardines, niosi, jaco), nattō, mushrooms, and seaweed (nori, wakame, hijiki). In particular, he emphasizes nattō’s benefits for bones, as well as for the gut, heart, and brain.

    As for his exercise: he did weight-bearing exercise and resistance training—including calisthenics and yoga, as well as sport, and simply walking and running. His weekly routine looked like this:

    • Monday: heart rate zone 2 jogging (45 min)
    • Tuesday: bodyweight HIIT and flexibility (20 min)
    • Wednesday: heart rate zone 2 jogging (60 min)
    • Thursday: bodyweight HIIT and flexibility (40 min)
    • Friday: heart rate zone 2 jogging (45 min)
    • Saturday: bodyweight HIIT and flexibility (20 min)

    …as well as social sports (e.g. tennis, amongst others), and additional activities such as gardening, and cycling for groceries.

    For more on all of the above (this is a very information-dense video), enjoy:

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

    Want to learn more?

    You might also like to read:

    Take care!

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