Glucomannan For Weight Loss, Gut Health, & More
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Glucomannan is a water-soluble dietary fiber found in the root of the konjac plant.
If you’ve had konjac noodles, also called shirataki, that’s what those are mostly made of, and it’s why they have next-to-no calories.
You may be wondering: if it’s water-soluble, how do the noodles not dissolve in water? And the answer is that the noodle-making process involves making a gel out of the fiber and water, which is then extruded into noodle shapes. In this gelatinous form, they’re fairly stable (it’s one of the most viscous dietary fibers), but yes, if you were to boil them for a long time, they would indeed turn the entire liquid contents of the saucepan into gel.
How it works for weight loss
Because of its viscosity, adding even a small amount of powdered* glucomannan to a glass of water will turn the whole thing into gel in seconds. This means that if you take glucomannan capsules with a glass of water, then so far as your stomach is concerned, you just ate a cup of gel, and the water is now processed as food, staying longer in the stomach than it otherwise would, and promoting feelings of fullness.
*i.e. dry powder, not in a gelatinous form like the noodles
As for its efficacy in weight loss, see for example:
❝Glucomannan was well-tolerated and resulted in significant weight loss in overweight and obese individuals❞
Read more: Glucomannan and obesity: a critical review
So, that covers the basic requirements, but may be wondering: does it have other benefits? And the answer is yes, it does:
❝Glucomannan appears to beneficially affect total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, triglycerides, body weight, and fasting blood glucose❞
To further corroborate that and comment on safety…
❝Results showed a significant mean weight loss using glucomannan over an eight-week period. Serum cholesterol and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol were significantly reduced in the glucomannan treated group. No adverse reactions to glucomannan were reported.❞
Read more: Effect of glucomannan on obese patients: a clinical study
As to whether other gel-making agents work the same way, the answer is no, they don’t seem to:
❝Glucomannan induced body weight reduction in healthy overweight subjects, whereas the addition of guar gum and alginate did not seem to cause additional loss of weight❞
Read more: Experiences with three different fiber supplements in weight reduction
How it works for gut health
In the words of Dr. Yu Li et al.,
❝Konjaku flour can achieve positive effects on treating obesity, which manifest on reducing BMI, fat mass, blood glucose, and blood lipid, improving hepatic function, and also regulating intestinal microfloral structure.
Therefore, changes in gut microbiota may explain in part the effects of konjaku flour.❞
Read in full: Effects of Konjaku Flour on the Gut Microbiota of Obese Patients
This has extra positive knock-on effects too:
Want to try some?
We don’t sell it, but here for your convenience are example products on Amazon:
Konjac noodles | Glucomannan capsules
Enjoy!
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The Large-Scale Effects Of Mindful Eating
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We’ve written before about mindful eating; our first article on the topic was putting a spotlight on Dr. Rupy “The Kitchen Doctor” Aula, and his recommendations:
Interoception: Improving Our Awareness Of Body Cues
For the most part, mindful eating is thought of as a way to slow down our consumption of any given meal, and thus appreciate it more, as well as enjoying better digestion (and thus, better nutrient absorption—more on that at the end of today’s feature, in the “learn more” section).
Indeed, it’s often (rightly) touted as a way to Hack Your Hunger ← our article on same, for which mindful eating is one part
But what about the big picture?
What the French discovered
A French team of researchers (Dr. Pauline Paolassini-Guesnier et al.) investigated mindful eating on a large (n=13,768) scale.
Since this needs defining in order to do science to it, mindful eating was defined for the purposes of this study as being present, attentive, and non-judgmental during eating, responding to internal cues rather than external triggers. These items were measured by questionnaire, along with other factors such as hunger/satiety, and food journal recording what people actually ate.
Higher mindful eating scores correlated with:
- Increased adherence to healthy plant-based diets.
- Reduced intake of unhealthy plant-based foods, meat, and dairy.
- Higher likelihood of being vegetarian, pescatarian, or vegan.
Note: this study in no way promoted, suggested, or asked leading questions about, adherence to a healthy plant-based diet, or avoidance of animal products. These were simply observed results.
Interestingly, no comparable association was found between mindful eating and fish consumption (or lack thereof). There are two reasonable hypotheses to explain this:
- When it comes to health, there is more growing awareness about the harmful effects of various kinds of terrestrial meat (especially red meat, and pork which brings similar metabolic risks) and dairy, while fish is popularly still considered healthy in moderation (science broadly agrees).
- When it comes to ethical considerations, humans tend to empathize more with our fellow mammals than we do with fish, and this may also sway decisions about dietary choices.
We are a health science publication, not moral philosophy publication, so we’ve not written any ethical treatises here, but we have written on the topic of the health risks (and benefits) of animal products: Do We Need Animal Products To Be Healthy?
There were some limitations, most notably that the study sample over-represented health-conscious people, and the cross-sectional design on the study can’t confirm causality (i.e. it looks a lot like mindful eating promotes these healthier dietary patterns, but it could be that the healthier dietary patterns promote mindful eating, or both).
You can read the paper in full, here: Mindful eating is associated with a healthier plant-based diet in the NutriNet-Santé study
Want to learn more?
If you’d like to take up mindful eating, we wrote a step-by-step guide:
Mindful Eating: How To Get More Out Of What’s On Your Plate
Enjoy!
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Pinch Of Nom, Everyday Light – by Kay Featherstone and Kate Allinson
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One of the biggest problems with “light”, “lean” or “under this many calories” cookbooks tends to be the portion sizes perhaps had sparrows in mind. Not so, here!
Nor do they go for the other usual trick, which is giving us something that’s clearly not a complete meal. All of these recipes are for complete meals, or else come with a suggestion of a simple accompaniment that will still keep the dish under 400kcal.
The recipes are packed with vegetables and protein, perfect for keeping lean while also making sure you’re full until the next meal.
Best of all, they are indeed rich and tasty meals—there’s only so many times one wants salmon with salad, after all. There are healthy-edition junk food options, too! Sausage and egg muffins, fish and chips, pizza-loaded fries, sloppy dogs, firecracker prawns, and more!
Most of the meals are quite quick and easy to make, and use common ingredients.
Nearly half are vegetarian, and gluten-free options involve only direct simple GF substitutions. Similarly, turning a vegetarian meal into a vegan meal is usually not rocket science! Again, quick and easy substitutions, à la “or the plant-based milk of your choice”.
Recipes are presented in the format: ingredients, method, photo. Super simple (and no “chef’s nostalgic anecdote storytime” introductions that take more than, say, a sentence to tell).
All in all, a fabulous addition to anyone’s home kitchen!
Get your copy of “Pinch of Nom—Everyday Light” from Amazon today!
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How To Eat To Lose Belly Fat (3 Stages)
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Belly fat is easier to gain than it is to lose, and it’s absolutely something that needs more attention in the kitchen than in the gym. Here’s one way of doing it:
By the numbers
First note: this video is by a man, and judging by the numbers mentioned, assumes that the viewer is also a man. An end goal of 10% body fat is a little on the low side for men, and would be dangerous for women. The magic 15% mark that he mentions as being a point where various metabolic things change, is more like 20% for women. All assuming normal hormones, of course, since it is hormones that direct this.
Healthy body fat percentages are (assuming normal hormones) in the range of 20–25% for women and 15–20% for men.
With that in mind…
The idea of this approach is to lose enough weight that your body gets rid of even the most awkward bits (e.g: visceral belly fat, which will often be the last to get used) before, if desired, then maintaining at a slightly higher body fat percentage.
- Stage 1: count calories (we don’t usually recommend this at 10almonds, but he does, so we’re reporting it here) and use your weight in pounds multiplied by 12 to give your daily calorie target. Make the majority of your diet foods that have a large volume:calorie ratio, such as fruits and vegetables, in order to feel full without overloading your metabolism. He has an interesting method of calculating a protein target; instead of the usual “1g/kg of body weight”, he says 1g per cm of height. Doing this consistently should get you to 15% body fat (so, 20%, for women).
- Stage 2: start counting fat intake too, and aim for 20–25% of your daily calories as fat. Continue, aside from that, with what you were doing in Stage 1. Doing this consistently should get you to 12% body fat (so, about 17%, for women). Being under the usual healthy level for a while should allow your body to start getting rid of visceral fat.
- Stage 3: track everything, levelling up your precision (no more “this little thing doesn’t count”), and planning ahead when it comes to social events etc. Doing this consistently should yet you to 10% body fat (so, about 15%, for women). This stage has a good chance of making most people miserable, so if that happens, consider the benefits of going back to the healthier 15% body fat (men) or 20% (women).
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:
Visceral Belly Fat & How To Lose It ← without calorie-counting! We prefer this 😉
Take care!
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Lemon Balm For Stressful Times And More
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Balm For The Mind: In More Ways Than One!
Lemon balm(Melissa officinalis) is quite unrelated to lemons, and is actually a closer relative to mint. It does have a lemony fragrance, though!
You’ll find it in a lot of relaxing/sleepy preparations, so…
What does the science say?
Relaxation
Lemon balm has indeed been found to be a potent anti-stress herb. Laboratories that need to test anything to do with stress generally create that stress in one of two main ways:
- If it’s not humans: a forced swimming test that’s a lot like waterboarding
- If it is humans: cognitive tests completed under time-pressure while multitasking
Consequently, studies that have set out to examine lemon balm’s anti-stress potential in humans, have often ended up also highlighting its potential as a cognitive enhancer, like this one in which…
❝Both active lemon balm treatments were generally associated with improvements in mood and/or cognitive performance❞
~ Dr. Anastasia Ossoukhova et al.
Read in full: Anti-Stress Effects of Lemon Balm-Containing Foods
And this one, which found…
❝The results showed that the 600-mg dose of Melissa ameliorated the negative mood effects of the DISS, with significantly increased self-ratings of calmness and reduced self-ratings of alertness.
In addition, a significant increase in the speed of mathematical processing, with no reduction in accuracy, was observed after ingestion of the 300-mg dose.❞
The appropriately named “DISS” is the Defined Intensity Stress Simulation we talked about.
Sleep
There’s a lot less research for lemon balm’s properties in this regard than for stress/anxiety, and it’s probably because sleep studies are much more expensive than stress studies.
It’s not for a lack of popular academic interest—for example, typing “Melissa officinalis” into PubMed (the vast library of studies we often cite from) autosuggests “Melissa officinalis sleep”. But alas, autosuggestions do not Randomized Controlled Trials make.
There are some, but they’re often small, old, and combined with other things, like this one:
This is interesting, because generally speaking there is little to no evidence that valerian actually helps sleep, so if this mixture worked, we might reasonably assume it was because of the lemon balm—but there’s an outside chance it could be that it only works in the presence of valerian (unlikely, but in science we must consider all possibilities).
Beyond that, we just have meta-reviews to work from, like this one that noted:
❝M. officinalis contains several phytochemicals such as phenolic acids, flavonoids, terpenoids, and many others at the basis of its pharmacological activities. Indeed, the plant can have antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, antispasmodic, antimicrobial, neuroprotective, nephroprotective, antinociceptive effects.
Given its consolidated use, M. officinalis has also been experimented with clinical settings, demonstrating interesting properties against different human diseases, such as anxiety, sleeping difficulties, palpitation, hypertension, depression, dementia, infantile colic, bruxism, metabolic problems, Alzheimer’s disease, and sexual disorders. ❞
You see why we don’t try to cover everything here, by the way!
But if you want to read this one in full, you can, at:
An Updated Review on The Properties of Melissa officinalis L.: Not Exclusively Anti-anxiety
Is it safe?
Lemon balm is generally recognized as safe, and/but please check with your doctor/pharmacist in case of any contraindications due to medicines you may be on or conditions you may have.
Want to try some?
We don’t sell it, but here for your convenience is an example product on Amazon
Want to know your other options?
You might like our previous main features:
What Teas To Drink Before Bed (By Science!)
and
Safe Effective Sleep Aids For Seniors
Enjoy!
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How Many Meds Per Day Is Too Many To Be Healthy?
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We’ve talked before about the potential dangers of taking medications one does not need:
Are You Taking PIMs? Getting Off The Overmedication Train ← “PIMs” = “Potentially Inappropriate Medications”
Often, this does not come from misdiagnosis or hypochondria or just some odd desire to take medications, but rather, it happens when one medication (statins are a great example of this) causes a bunch of side effects, and these can then lead to a “side effect train” whereby the patient then has to take something else to treat the side effect, then something else to treat the side effect(s) of that medication, and so on, until they are taking an increasingly large stack of medications.
You can read on that in detail, here: Statins: His & Hers? ← because adverse side effects are much more common for women (and the benefits typically fewer/smaller for women) than for men.
But what about taking correctly-prescribed medications that all have a good reason and aren’t a case of treating a “side effect train”?
The rise of polypharmacy
“Polypharmacy” is defined as taking 5 or more medications concurrently.
Researchers (Dr. Caroline Sloan et al.) used data from a decades-long study to see how taking multiple medications affects strength, balance, and mobility in midlife.
Of 1,842 participants, approximately half being women and with an average age of 60 at the time of this research (the main study began 40 years ago), 29% were taking more than 5 medications concurrently, and 25% were taking at least one PIM.
Why this matters: those on 5 or more prescriptions:
- walked more slowly
- had weaker grip strength
- had worse balance
- scored lower on the CARDIA Physical Performance (CAPP) scale
…compared to those taking 4 or fewer medications concurrently.
Notably, it wasn’t the specific drugs (or their “appropriateness”) that mattered most, but the number of medications taken. PIM use was initially associated with a slightly lower lower CAPP score, but this association disappeared once adjusted for polypharmacy.
Caveat: the study doesn’t prove causation—underlying health conditions may be the shared reason for both polypharmacy and physical decline (i.e. someone who has poor health will take more medications, and it’s not the medications causing the ill health), but it shows a strong association in people as young as their 50s.
How this is useful: what this means is that polypharmacy could be an early red flag for mobility and strength decline, especially in cases where the medications are for something that medical science doesn’t yet understand well such as fibromyalgia, which is more a description than a useful diagnosis (see: Why Fibromyalgia Is Not An Acceptable Diagnosis).
In other words, polypharmacy should be regarded as an alarm bell for “maybe we need to look more into what’s going on here”, and even in cases where what’s going on is, in fact, well-understood, it can still serve as a “so we must be extra careful to maintain strength, speed, balance, etc”.
You can find the paper itself, here: Association Between Polypharmacy and Physical Function in Middle-aged Adults: Findings from the CARDIA Function Study
Want to learn more?
You may like this very good book that we reviewed a little while back:
Take care!
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Eat Well With Arthritis – by Emily Johnson, with Dr. Deepak Ravindran
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Author Emily Johnson was diagnosed with arthritis in her early 20s, but it had been affecting her life since the age of 4. Suffice it to say, managing the condition has been integral to her life.
She’s written this book with not only her own accumulated knowledge, but also the input of professional experts; the book contains insights from chronic pain specialist Dr. Deepak Ravindran, and gets an additional medical thumbs-up in a foreword by rheumatologist Dr. Lauren Freid.
The recipes themselves are clear and easy, and the ingredients are not obscure. There’s information on what makes each dish anti-inflammatory, per ingredient, so if you have cause to make any substitutions, that’s useful to know.
Speaking of ingredients, the recipes are mostly plant-based (though there are some chicken/fish ones) and free from common allergens—but not all of them are, so each of those is marked appropriately.
Beyond the recipes, there are also sections on managing arthritis more generally, and information on things to get for your kitchen that can make your life with arthritis a lot easier!
Bottom line: if you have arthritis, cook for somebody with arthritis, or would just like a low-inflammation diet, then this is an excellent book for you.
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