Fruit Is Healthy; Juice Isn’t (Here’s Why)
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.
Biochemist and “Glucose Goddess” Jessie Inchauspé wants us to understand the difference:
Stripped!
A glass of orange juice contains 22 grams of sugar (about six sugar cubes), nearly as much as a can of soda (27 grams).
Orange juice is widely perceived as healthy due to vitamin content—but if you add vitamins to soda, it won’t make it healthy, because the main health effect is still the sugar, leading to glucose spikes and many resultant health risks. The positive image of fruit juice is mainly from industry marketing.
In reality, Inchauspé advises, fruit juice should be treated like a dessert—consumed for pleasure, not health benefits.
But why, then, is fruit healthy if fruit juice is unhealthy? Isn’t the sugar there too?
Whole fruit contains plenty of fiber, which slows sugar absorption and prevents glucose spikes. Juicing strips it of its fiber, leaving water and sugar.
The American Heart Association suggests a sugar limit: 25g/day for women, 36g/day for men. One glass of orange juice nearly meets the daily limit for women. If that’s how you want to “spend” your daily sugar allowance, go for it, but do so consciously, by choice, knowing that the allowance is now “spent”.
In contrast, if you eat whole fruit, that basically “doesn’t count” for sugar purposes. The sugar is there, but the fiber more than offsets it, making whole fruit very good for blood sugars.
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:
Which Sugars Are Healthier, And Which Are Just The Same?
Take care!
Don’t Forget…
Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!
Recommended
Learn to Age Gracefully
Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:
-
Can apps and digital resources support your child with autism or ADHD?
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.
Neurodevelopmental conditions such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and autism affect about one in ten children. These conditions impact development, behaviour and wellbeing.
But children with these conditions and their caregivers often can’t get the support they need. Families report difficulties accessing health-care providers and experience long wait lists to receive care.
Digital tools, such as apps and websites, are often viewed as a solution to these gaps. With a single click or a download, families might be able to access information to support their child.
There are lots of digital tools available, but it’s hard to know what is and isn’t useful. Our new study evaluated freely available digital resources for child neurodevelopment and mental health to understand their quality and evidence base.
We found many resources were functional and engaging. However, resources often lacked evidence for the information provided and the claimed positive impact on children and families.
This is a common problem in the digital resource field, where the high expectations and claims of impact from digital tools to change health care have not yet been realised.
Fabio Principe/Shutterstock What type of resources?
Our study identified 3,435 separate resources, of which 112 (43 apps and 69 websites) met our criteria for review. These resources all claimed to provide information or supports for child neurodevelopment, mental health or wellbeing.
Resources had to be freely available, in English and have actionable information for children and families.
The most common focus was on autism, representing 17% of all resources. Resources suggested they provided strategies to promote speech, language and social development, and to support challenging behaviours.
Other common areas included language and communication (14%), and ADHD (10%).
Resources had various purposes, including journalling and providing advice, scheduling support, and delivering activities and strategies for parents. Resources delivered information interactively, with some apps organising content into structured modules.
Resources also provided options for alternative and assistive communication for people with language or communication challenges.
Most apps were functional and accessible
Our first question was about how engaging and accessible the information was. Resources that are hard to use aren’t used frequently, regardless of the information quality.
We evaluated aesthetics, including whether digital tools were easy to use and navigate, stylistically consistent, with clean and appealing graphics for users.
Most resources were rated as highly engaging, with strong accessibility and functionality.
Most apps and websites we evaluated were engaging. jamesteohart/Shutterstock But many lacked quality information
We ranked resources on various features from 1 (inadequate) to 5 (excellent), with a ranking of 3 considered acceptable. These ratings looked at how credible the resource was and whether there was evidence supporting it.
Despite their functionality, 37% of reviewed apps did not meet the minimum acceptable standards for information quality. This means many apps could not be recommended. Most websites fared better than apps.
There also wasn’t a lot of scientific evidence to suggest using either apps or digital resources actually helped families. Studies show long-term engagement with digital tools is rare, and downloads don’t correspond to frequent usage or benefits.
Digital tools are often viewed as a panacea to health-care gaps, but the evidence is yet to show they fill such gaps. Digital health is a fast-moving field and resources are often made available before they have been properly evaluated.
What should you look for in digital resources?
We found the highest quality resources were developed in collaboration with institutions, such as health, university or government groups.
One highly rated resource was the Raising Children’s Network and the associated app, Raising Healthy Minds. These are co-developed with a university and hospital, and by people with appropriate qualifications.
This resource provides information to support children’s overall health, development and wellbeing, with dedicated sections addressing neurodevelopmental needs and concerns.
The Raising Children Network provides resources for child health, including neurodevelopmental needs. Raising Children Network screenshot Our research shows parents can assess whether digital resources are high quality by checking they are:
- factually correct. Look for where the app or resource is getting its information. Does the author have the qualifications and training to provide the information? Are they a registered health expert who is accountable to a regulatory body (such as AHPRA, the Australian Health Practitioners Regulation Agency) for providing information that does not cause harm?
- consistent across multiple credible sources, such as health institutions.
- linked to supporting information. Look for reliable links to reputable institutions. Links to peer-reviewed scientific journals are often helpful as those articles will also usually describe the limitations of the research presented.
- up-to-date. Apps should be frequently updated. For websites, dates of update are usually found on the homepage or at the bottom of individual pages.
Check when information was last updated. fizkes/Shutterstock Beware of red flags
Some things to watch out for are:
- testimonials and anecdotes without evidence and scientific links to back the anecdotes up. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
- no information provided about conflicts of interest. Organisations gain when you click on their links or take their advice (financial, reputation and brand development). Think about what they gain when you use their information to help keep a balanced perspective.
Remember, the app’s star rating doesn’t mean it will contain factual information from a reliable source or be helpful for you and your child.
The role of digital tools
Digital tools won’t usually replace a health professional, but they can support care in many different ways. They may be used to help to educate and prepare for meetings, and to collaborate with health providers.
They may also be used to collect information about daily needs. Studies show reporting on sleep in children can be notoriously difficult, for example. But tracking sleep behaviour with actigraphy, where movement and activity patterns are measured using a wearable device, can provide information to support clinical care. With the promise of artificial intelligence, there will also be new opportunities to support daily living.
Our findings reflect a broader problem for digital health, however. Much investment is often made in developing products to drive use, with spurious claims of health benefits.
What’s needed is a system that prioritises the funding, implementation and evaluation of tools to demonstrate benefits for families. Only then may we realise the potential of digital tools to benefit those who use them.
Kelsie Boulton, Senior Research Fellow in Child Neurodevelopment, Brain and Mind Centre, University of Sydney and Adam Guastella, Professor and Clinical Psychologist, Michael Crouch Chair in Child and Youth Mental Health, University of Sydney
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Share This Post
-
Think Again – by Adam Grant
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.
Warning: this book may cause some feelings of self-doubt! Ride them out and see where they go, though.
It was Socrates who famously (allegedly) said “ἓν οἶδα ὅτι οὐδὲν οἶδα”—”I know that I know nothing”.
Adam Grant wants us to take this philosophy and apply it usefully to modern life. How?
The main premise is that rethinking our plans, answers and decisions is a good thing… Not a weakness. In contrast, he says, a fixed mindset closes us to opportunities—and better alternatives.
He wants us to be sure that we don’t fall into the trap of the Dunning-Kruger Effect (overestimating our abilities because of being unaware of how little we know), but he also wants us to rethink whole strategies, too. For example:
Grant’s approach to interpersonal conflict is very remniscent of another book we might review sometime, “Aikido in Everyday Life“. The idea here is to not give in to our knee-jerk responses to simply retaliate in kind, but rather to sidestep, pivot, redirect. This is, admittedly, the kind of “rethinking” that one usually has to rethink in advance—it’s too late in the moment! Hence the value of a book.
Nor is the book unduly subjective. “Wishy-washiness” has a bad rep, but Grant gives us plenty in the way of data and examples of how we can, for example, avoid losses by not doubling down on a mistake.
What, then, of strongly-held core principles? Rethinking doesn’t mean we must change our mind—it simply means being open to the possibility in contexts where such makes sense.
Grant borrows, in effect, from:
❝Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better… do better!❞
So, not so much undercutting the principles we hold dear, and instead rather making sure they stand on firm foundations.
All in all, a thought-provokingly inspiring read!
Share This Post
-
Solitary Fitness – by Charles Bronson
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.
Sometimes it can seem that every new diet and/or exercise regime you want to try will change your life, if just you first max out your credit card on restocking your kitchen and refurbishing your home gym, not to mention buying all the best supplements, enjoying the latest medical gadgets, and so on and so forth.
And often… Most of those things genuinely are good! And it’s great that such things are becoming more accessible and available.
But… Wouldn’t it be nice to know how to have excellent strength and fitness without any of that, even if just as a “bare bones” protocol to fall back on? That’s what Manson provides in this book.
The writing style is casual and friendly; Manson is not exactly an academic, but he knows his stuff when it comes to what works. And a good general rule of thumb is: if it’s something that he can do in his jail cell, we can surely do it in the comfort of our homes.
Bottom line: if you want functional strength and fitness with zero gimmicks, this is the book for you (as an aside, it’s also simply an interesting and recommendable read, sociologically speaking, but that’s another matter entirely).
Share This Post
Related Posts
-
Blood and Water
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.
Q&A with the 10almonds Team
Q: I really loved the information about macular degeneration! I was wondering if you have any other advice about looking after eye health?
A: We may well do a full feature on it sometime! Meanwhile, some top tips include:
- Eat your greens (as you know from this last Tuesday’s edition of 10almonds)!
- Exercise! Generally. We’re not talking about eye exercises here, we’re talking about exercises that will support:
- Healthy heart rate
- Healthy blood pressure
- Healthy blood oxygenation
- Healthy blood sugar levels
- Healthy blood flow in general (so keep hydrated too! There’s a reason phlebotomists ask you to be well-hydrated before they take blood)
Eye health is a good indicator for a lot of other things, and that’s because whether or not the eyes are the window to your soul, they’re definitely the window to what your blood’s like, and that affects (and is affected by) so many other things.
- On that note, don’t smoke!
- Protect your eyes physically, too. This means:
- UV-blocking sunglasses when appropriate
- Protective eye-wear when appropriate
You think safety glasses are for laboratories and construction sites, then you go and do comparable tasks in your home? Your eyes are just as damageable in your kitchen or garden as they would be in a lab or workshop.
Some bits and bobs that can help:
- Safety sunglasses! Because a thing can do two jobs (useful in the garden now the days are brightening up!)
- Pulse oximeter! Check your own heart rate, pulse strength, and blood oxygenation at home!
- Blood pressure monitor! Because it’s so important for a lot of things and you really should have one.
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:
-
Microplastics are in our brains. How worried should I be?
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.
Plastic is in our clothes, cars, mobile phones, water bottles and food containers. But recent research adds to growing concerns about the impact of tiny plastic fragments on our health.
A study from the United States has, for the first time, found microplastics in human brains. The study, which has yet to be independently verified by other scientists, has been described in the media as scary, shocking and alarming.
But what exactly are microplastics? What do they mean for our health? Should we be concerned?
Daniel Megias/Shutterstock What are microplastics? Can you see them?
We often consider plastic items to be indestructible. But plastic breaks down into smaller particles. Definitions vary but generally microplastics are smaller than five millimetres.
This makes some too small to be seen with the naked eye. So, many of the images the media uses to illustrate articles about microplastics are misleading, as some show much larger, clearly visible pieces.
Microplastics have been reported in many sources of drinking water and everyday food items. This means we are constantly exposed to them in our diet.
Such widespread, chronic (long-term) exposure makes this a serious concern for human health. While research investigating the potential risk microplastics pose to our health is limited, it is growing.
How about this latest study?
The study looked at concentrations of microplastics in 51 samples from men and women set aside from routine autopsies in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Samples were from the liver, kidney and brain.
These tiny particles are difficult to study due to their size, even with a high-powered microscope. So rather than trying to see them, researchers are beginning to use complex instruments that identify the chemical composition of microplastics in a sample. This is the technique used in this study.
The researchers were surprised to find up to 30 times more microplastics in brain samples than in the liver and kidney.
They hypothesised this could be due to high blood flow to the brain (carrying plastic particles with it). Alternatively, the liver and kidneys might be better suited to dealing with external toxins and particles. We also know the brain does not undergo the same amount of cellular renewal as other organs in the body, which could make the plastics linger here.
The researchers also found the amount of plastics in brain samples increased by about 50% between 2016 and 2024. This may reflect the rise in environmental plastic pollution and increased human exposure.
The microplastics found in this study were mostly composed of polyethylene. This is the most commonly produced plastic in the world and is used for many everyday products, such as bottle caps and plastic bags.
This is the first time microplastics have been found in human brains, which is important. However, this study is a “pre-print”, so other independent microplastics researchers haven’t yet reviewed or validated the study.
The most common plastic found was polyethylene, which is used to make plastic bags and bottle caps. Maciej Bledowski/Shutterstock How do microplastics end up in the brain?
Microplastics typically enter the body through contaminated food and water. This can disrupt the gut microbiome (the community of microbes in your gut) and cause inflammation. This leads to effects in the whole body via the immune system and the complex, two-way communication system between the gut and the brain. This so-called gut-brain axis is implicated in many aspects of health and disease.
We can also breathe in airborne microplastics. Once these particles are in the gut or lungs, they can move into the bloodstream and then travel around the body into various organs.
Studies have found microplastics in human faeces, joints, livers, reproductive organs, blood, vessels and hearts.
Microplastics also migrate to the brains of wild fish. In mouse studies, ingested microplastics are absorbed from the gut into the blood and can enter the brain, becoming lodged in other organs along the way.
To get into brain tissue, microplastics must cross the blood-brain-barrier, an intricate layer of cells that is supposed to keep things in the blood from entering the brain.
Although concerning, this is not surprising, as microplastics must cross similar cell barriers to enter the urine, testes and placenta, where they have already been found in humans.
Is this a health concern?
We don’t yet know the effects of microplastics in the human brain. Some laboratory experiments suggest microplastics increase brain inflammation and cell damage, alter gene expression and change brain structure.
Aside from the effects of the microplastic particles themselves, microplastics might also pose risks if they carry environmental toxins or bacteria into and around the body.
Various plastic chemicals could also leach out of the microplastics into the body. These include the famous hormone-disrupting chemicals known as BPAs.
But microplastics and their effects are difficult to study. In addition to their small size, there are so many different types of plastics in the environment. More than 13,000 different chemicals have been identified in plastic products, with more being developed every year.
Microplastics are also weathered by the environment and digestive processes, and this is hard to reproduce in the lab.
A goal of our research is to understand how these factors change the way microplastics behave in the body. We plan to investigate if improving the integrity of the gut barrier through diet or probiotics can prevent the uptake of microplastics from the gut into the bloodstream. This may effectively stop the particles from circulating around the body and lodging into organs.
How do I minimise my exposure?
Microplastics are widespread in the environment, and it’s difficult to avoid exposure. We are just beginning to understand how microplastics can affect our health.
Until we have more scientific evidence, the best thing we can do is reduce our exposure to plastics where we can and produce less plastic waste, so less ends up in the environment.
An easy place to start is to avoid foods and drinks packaged in single-use plastic or reheated in plastic containers. We can also minimise exposure to synthetic fibres in our home and clothing.
Sarah Hellewell, Senior Research Fellow, The Perron Institute for Neurological and Translational Science, and Research Fellow, Faculty of Health Sciences, Curtin University; Anastazja Gorecki, Teaching & Research Scholar, School of Health Sciences, University of Notre Dame Australia, and Charlotte Sofield, PhD Candidate, studying microplastics and gut/brain health, University of Notre Dame Australia
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:
-
Vibration Plate, Review After 6 Months: Is It Worth It?
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.
Is it push-button exercise, or an expensive fad, or something else entirely? Robin, from “The Science of Self-Care”, has insights:
Science & Experience
According to the science (studies cited in the video and linked-to in the video description, underneath it on YouTube), vibration therapy does have some clear benefits, namely:
- Bone health (helps with bone density, particularly beneficial for postmenopausal women)
- Muscle recovery (reduces lactate levels, aiding faster recovery)
- Joint health (reduces pain and improves function in osteoarthritis patients)
- Muscle stimulation (helps older adults maintain muscle mass)
- Cognitive function (due to increased blood flow to the brain)
And from her personal experience, the benefits included:
- Improved recovery after exercise, reducing muscle soreness and stiffness
- Reduced back pain and improved posture (not surprising, given the need for stabilizing muscles when using one of these)
- Better circulation and (likely resulting from same) skin clarity
She did not, however, notice:
- Any reduction in cellulite
- Any change in body composition (fat loss or muscle gain)
For a deeper look into these things and more, plus a demonstration of how the machine actually operates, 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:
