Grain Brain – by Dr. David Perlmutter

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If you’re a regular 10almonds reader, you probably know that refined flour, and processed food in general, is not great for the health. So, what does this book offer more?

Dr. Perlmutter sets out the case against (as the subtitle suggests) wheat, carbs, and sugar. Yes, including wholegrain wheat, and including starchy vegetables such as potatoes and parsnips. Fruit does also come under scrutiny, a clear distinction is made between whole fruits and juices. In the latter case, the lack of fiber (along with the more readily absorbable liquid state) allows for those sugars to zip straight into our blood.

The book includes lots of stats and facts, and many study citations, along with infographics and clear explanations.

If the book has a weakness, it’s when it forgets to clarify something that was obvious to the author. For example, when he talks about our ancestors’ diets being 75% fat and 5% carbs, he neglects to mention that this is 75% by calorie count, not by mass or volume. This makes a huge difference! It’s the difference between a fat-guzzling engine, and someone who eats mostly fruit and oily nuts but also some very high-fat meat/organs.

The book’s strengths, on the other hand, are found in its explanation, backed by good science, of what wheat, along with excessive carbohydrates (especially sugar) can do to our body, including (and most focusedly, hence the title) our brain, leading the way to not just obvious metabolic disorders like diabetes, but also inflammatory diseases like Alzheimer’s.

Bottom line: you don’t have to completely revamp your diet if it’s working for you, but data is data, and this book has lots, making it well-worth a read.

Click here to check out Grain Brain, and learn about how to avoid inflaming yours!

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  • 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).

    Get ProtonMail!

    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

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  • Our blood-brain barrier stops bugs and toxins getting to our brain. Here’s how it works

    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 brain is an extremely complex and delicate organ. Our body fiercely protects it by holding onto things that help it and keeping harmful things out, such as bugs that can cause infection and toxins.

    It does that though a protective layer called the blood-brain barrier. Here’s how it works, and what it means for drug design.

    The Conversation, Rattiya Thongdumhyu/Shutterstock, Petr Ganaj/Pexels

    First, let’s look at the circulatory system

    Adults have roughly 30 trillion cells in their body. Every cell needs a variety of nutrients and oxygen, and they produce waste, which needs to be taken away.

    Our circulatory system provides this service, delivering nutrients and removing waste.

    A fenestrated capillary
    Fenestrated capillaries let nutrients and waste pass through. Vectormine/Shutterstock

    Where the circulatory system meets your cells, it branches down to tiny tubes called capillaries. These tiny tubes, about one-tenth the width of a human hair, are also made of cells.

    But in most capillaries, there are some special features (known as fenestrations) that allow relatively free exchange of nutrients and waste between the blood and the cells of your tissues.

    It’s kind of like pizza delivery

    One way to think about the way the circulation works is like a pizza delivery person in a big city. On the really big roads (vessels) there are walls and you can’t walk up to the door of the house and pass someone the pizza.

    But once you get down to the little suburban streets (capillaries), the design of the streets means you can stop, get off your scooter and walk up to the door to deliver the pizza (nutrients).

    We often think of the brain as a spongy mass without much blood in it. In reality, the average brain has about 600 kilometres of blood vessels.

    The difference between the capillaries in most of the brain and those elsewhere is that these capillaries are made of specialised cells that are very tightly joined together and limit the free exchange of anything dissolved in your blood. These are sometimes called continuous capillaries.

    Continuous capillary
    Continuous capillaries limit the free exchange of anything dissolved in your blood. Vectormine/Shutterstock

    This is the blood brain barrier. It’s not so much a bag around your brain stopping things from getting in and out but more like walls on all the streets, even the very small ones.

    The only way pizza can get in is through special slots and these are just the right shape for the pizza box.

    The blood brain barrier is set up so there are specialised transporters (like pizza box slots) for all the required nutrients. So mostly, the only things that can get in are things that there are transporters for or things that look very similar (on a molecular scale).

    The analogy does fall down a little bit because the pizza box slot applies to nutrients that dissolve in water. Things that are highly soluble in fat can often bypass the slots in the wall.

    Why do we have a blood-brain barrier?

    The blood brain barrier is thought to exist for a few reasons.

    First, it protects the brain from toxins you might eat (think chemicals that plants make) and viruses that often can infect the rest of your body but usually don’t make it to your brain.

    It also provides protection by tightly regulating the movement of nutrients and waste in and out, providing a more stable environment than in the rest of the body.

    Lastly, it serves to regulate passage of immune cells, preventing unnecessary inflammation which could damage cells in the brain.

    What it means for medicines

    One consequence of this tight regulation across the blood brain barrier is that if you want a medicine that gets to the brain, you need to consider how it will get in.

    There are a few approaches. Highly fat-soluble molecules can often pass into the brain, so you might design your drug so it is a bit greasy.

    Person holds tablet and glass
    The blood-brain barrier stops many medicines getting into the brain. Ron Lach/Pexels

    Another option is to link your medicine to another molecule that is normally taken up into the brain so it can hitch a ride, or a “pro-drug”, which looks like a molecule that is normally transported.

    Using it to our advantage

    You can also take advantage of the blood brain barrier.

    Opioids used for pain relief often cause constipation. They do this because their target (opioid receptors) are also present in the nervous system of the intestines, where they act to slow movement of the intestinal contents.

    Imodium (Loperamide), which is used to treat diarrhoea, is actually an opioid, but it has been specifically designed so it can’t cross the blood brain barrier.

    This design means it can act on opioid receptors in the gastrointestinal tract, slowing down the movement of contents, but does not act on brain opioid receptors.

    In contrast to Imodium, Ozempic and Victoza (originally designed for type 2 diabetes, but now popular for weight-loss) both have a long fat attached, to improve the length of time they stay in the body.

    A consequence of having this long fat attached is that they can cross the blood-brain barrier, where they act to suppress appetite. This is part of the reason they are so effective as weight-loss drugs.

    So while the blood brain barrier is important for protecting the brain it presents both a challenge and an opportunity for development of new medicines.

    Sebastian Furness, ARC Future Fellow, School of Biomedical Sciences, The University of Queensland

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

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  • How Metformin Slows Aging

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    Metformin And How It Slows Down Aging

    That’s a bold claim for a title, but the scientific consensus is clear, and this Research Review Monday we’re going to take a look at exactly that!

    Metformin is a common diabetes-management drug, used to lower blood sugar levels in people who either don’t have enough insulin or the insulin isn’t being recognized well enough by the body.

    However, it also slows aging, which is a quality it’s also been studied for for more than a decade. We’ll look at some of the more recent research, though. Let’s kick off with an initial broad statement, from the paper “The Use of Metformin to Increase the Human Healthspan”, as part of the “Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology” series:

    In recent years, more attention has been paid to the possibility of using metformin as an anti-aging drug. It was shown to significantly increase the lifespan in some model organisms and delay the onset of age-associated declines. Growing amounts of evidence from clinical trials suggest that metformin can effectively reduce the risk of many age-related diseases and conditions, including cardiometabolic disorders, neurodegeneration, chronic inflammation and frailty.

    ~ Piskovatska et al, 2020

    How does it work?

    That’s still being studied, but the scientific consensus is that it works by inducing hormesis—the process by which minor stress signals cells to start repairing themselves. How does it induce that hormesis? Again, still being studied, but it appears to do it by activating a specific enzyme; namely, the AMP-activated protein kinase:

    Read: Metformin-enhances resilience via hormesis

    It also has been found to slow aging by means of an anti-inflammatory effect, as a bonus!

    Any bad news?

    Well, firstly, in most places it’s only prescribed for diabetes management, not for healthy life extension. A lot of anti-aging enthusiasts have turned to the grey market online to get it, and we can’t recommend that.

    Secondly, it does have some limitations:

    • Its bioavailability isn’t great in tablet form (the form in which it is most commonly given)
    • It has quite a short elimination half-life (around 6 hours), which makes it great to fix transient hyperglycemia in diabetics—job done and it’s out—but presents a logistical challenge when it comes to something so pernicious as aging.
    • Some people are non-responders (a non-responder, in medicine, is someone for whom a drug simply doesn’t work, for no obvious reason)

    Want to know more? Check out:

    Metformin in aging and aging-related diseases: clinical applications and relevant mechanism

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Related Posts

  • Modern Friendship – by Anna Goldfarb
  • Older, Faster, Stronger – by Margaret Webb

    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 author, now in her 60s, made it her mission in her 50s to become the best runner she could. Before that, she’d been a keen runner previously, but let things slip rather in her 40s. But the book’s not about her 40s, it’s about her 50s and onwards, and other female runners in their 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, and even 90s.

    There’s a lot of this book that’s about people’s individual stories, and those should certainly be enough to prompt almost any reader that “if they can do it, I can”.

    A lot, meanwhile, is about health and exercise science, training methods, and what has worked for various later-life athletes, including the author. So, it’s also partway instruction manual, with plenty of reference to science and medical considerations too.

    Bottom line: sometimes, life throws us challenges. Sometimes, the best response is “Yeah? Bet” and surprise everyone.

    Click here to check out Older, Faster, Stronger, and become all those cool things!

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  • Taurine’s Benefits For Heart Health And More

    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.

    Taurine: Research Review

    First, what is taurine, beyond being an ingredient in many energy drinks?

    It’s an amino acid that many animals, including humans, can synthesize in our bodies. Some other animals—including obligate carnivores such as cats (but not dogs, who are omnivorous by nature) cannot synthesize taurine and must get it from food.

    So, as humans are very versatile omnivorous frugivores by nature, we have choices:

    • Synthesize it—no need for any conscious action; it’ll just happen
    • Eat it—by eating meat, which contains taurine
    • Supplement it—by taking supplements, including energy drinks, which generally (but not always) use a bioidentical lab-made taurine. Basically, lab-made taurine is chemically identical to the kind found in meat, it’s just cheaper and doesn’t involve animals as a middleman.

    What does it do?

    Taurine does a bunch of essential things, including:

    • Maintaining hydration/electrolyte balance in cells
    • Regulating calcium/magnesium balance in cells
    • Forming bile salts, which are needed for digestion
    • Supporting the integrity of the central nervous system
    • Regulating the immune system and antioxidative processes

    Thus, a shortage of taurine can lead to such issues as kidney problems, eye tissue damage (since the eyes are a particularly delicate part of the CNS), and cardiomyopathy.

    If you want to read more, here’s an academic literature review:

    Taurine: A “very essential” amino acid

    On the topic of eye health, a 2014 study found that taurine is the most plentiful amino acid in the eye, and helps protect against retinal degeneration, in which they say:

    ❝We here review the evidence for a role of taurine in retinal ganglion cell survival and studies suggesting that this compound may be involved in the pathophysiology of glaucoma or diabetic retinopathy. Along with other antioxidant molecules, taurine should therefore be seriously reconsidered as a potential treatment for such retinal diseases❞

    Read more: Taurine: the comeback of a neutraceutical in the prevention of retinal degenerations

    Taurine for muscles… In more than sports!

    We’d be remiss not to mention that taurine is enjoyed by athletes to enhance athletic performance; indeed, it’s one of its main selling-points:

    See: Taurine in sports and exercise

    But! It’s also useful for simply maintaining skeleto-muscular health in general, and especially in the context of age-related decline and chronic disease:

    Taurine: the appeal of a safe amino acid for skeletal muscle disorders

    On the topic of safety… How safe is it?

    There’s an interesting answer to that question. Within safe dose ranges (we’ll get to that), taurine is not only relatively safe, but also, studies that looked to explore its risks found new benefits in the process. Specifically of interest to us were that it appears to promote better long-term memory, especially as we get older (as taurine levels in the brain decline with age):

    Taurine, Caffeine, and Energy Drinks: Reviewing the Risks to the Adolescent Brain

    ^Notwithstanding the title, we assure you, the research got there; they said:

    ❝Interestingly, the levels of taurine in the brain decreased significantly with age, which led to numerous studies investigating the potential neuroprotective effects of supplemental taurine in several different experimental models❞

    What experimental models were those? These ones:

    …which were all animal studies, however.

    The same systematic review also noted that not only was more research needed on humans, but also, existing studies have had a strong bias to male physiology (in both human and assorted other animal studies), so more diverse study is needed too.

    What are the safe dose ranges?

    Before we get to toxicity, let’s look at some therapeutic doses. In particular, some studies that found that 500mg 3x daily, i.e. 1.5g total daily, had benefits for heart health:

    Bottom line on safety: 3g/day has been found to be safe:

    Click here to see the findings of the risk assessment published in the Journal of Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology

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  • Bright Line Eating – by Dr. Susan Peirce Thompson

    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.

    This is a great title! It’s a great book too, but let’s talk about the title for a moment:

    The “Bright Line” referenced (often used in the plural within the book) is the line one draws between what one will and will not do. It’s a line one doesn’t cross, and it’s a bright line, because it’s not a case of “oh woe is me I cannot have the thing”, but rather “oh yay is me for I being joyously healthy”.

    And as for living happy, thin, and free? The author makes clear that “thin” is only a laudable goal if it’s bookended by “happy” and “free”. Eating things because we want to, and being happy about our choices.

    To this end, while some of the book is about nutrition (and for example the strong recommendation to make the first “bright lines” one draws cutting out sugar and flour), the majority of it is about the psychology of eating.

    This includes, hunger and satiety, willpower and lack thereof, disordered eating and addictions, body image issues and social considerations, the works. She realizes and explains, that if being healthy were just a matter of the right diet plan, everyone would be healthy. But it’s not; our eating behaviors don’t exist in a vacuum, and there’s a lot more to consider.

    Despite all the odds, however, this is a cheerful and uplifting book throughout, while dispensing very practical, well-evidenced methods for getting your brain to get your body to do what you want it to.

    Bottom line: this isn’t your average diet book, and it’s not just a motivational pep talk either. It’s an enjoyable read that’s also full of science and can make a huge difference to how you see food.

    Click here to check out Bright Line Eating, and enjoy life, healthily!

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