Green Coffee Bean Extract: Coffee Benefits Without The Coffee?
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.
Coffee is, on balance, very good for the health in moderation. We wrote about it here:
The Bitter Truth About Coffee (or is it?)
Some quick facts before moving on:
- Coffee is the world’s biggest source of antioxidants
- 65% reduced risk of Alzheimer’s for coffee-drinkers
- 67% reduced risk of type 2 diabetes for coffee-drinkers
- 43% reduced risk of liver cancer for coffee-drinkers
- 53% reduced suicide risk for coffee-drinkers
Those are some compelling statistics!
But what about the caffeine content?
Assuming one doesn’t have a caffeine sensitivity, caffeine is also healthy in moderation—but it is easy to accidentally become dependent on it, so it can be good to take a “tolerance break” once in a while, and then reintroduce it with more modest moderation:
Caffeine: Cognitive Enhancer Or Brain-Wrecker?
We also, for that matter, have discussed its impact on the gut:
Coffee & Your Gut ← surprise, it’s a positive impact
What if I don’t like coffee?
We suspect that, having seen the title of this article, you know what the answer’s going to be here:
Green coffee bean extract is the extract from green (i.e. unroasted) coffee beans. It has one or two advantages over drinking coffee:
- For those who do not like drinking coffee, this supplement sidesteps that neatly
- Roasting coffee beans destroys a lot (sometimes almost all; it depends on the temperature and duration) of their chlorogenic acid, a highly beneficial polyphenol; using unroasted (i.e. green) coffee beans avoids that
See: Role of roasting conditions in the level of chlorogenic acid content in coffee beans
All about GCE and CGA
That’s “green coffee extract” and “chlorogenic acid”, respectively, bearing in mind that the latter is found generously in the former.
As to what it does:
❝CGA is an important and biologically active dietary polyphenol, playing several important and therapeutic roles such as antioxidant activity, antibacterial, hepatoprotective, cardioprotective, anti-inflammatory, antipyretic, neuroprotective, anti-obesity, antiviral, anti-microbial, anti-hypertension, free radicals scavenger and a central nervous system (CNS) stimulator. Furthermore, CGA causes hepatoprotective effects.❞
👆 Those are the things we know for sure that it does. And it may do even more things:
❝In addition, it has been found that CGA could modulate lipid metabolism and glucose in both genetically and healthy metabolic related disorders. It is speculated that CGA can perform crucial roles in lipid and glucose metabolism regulation and thus help to treat many disorders such as hepatic steatosis, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and obesity as well.❞
Read in full: Chlorogenic acid (CGA): A pharmacological review and call for further research
About lipid metabolism…
- Green coffee extract supplementation significantly reduces serum total cholesterol levels.
- Green coffee extract supplementation significantly reduces serum LDL (“bad” cholesterol) levels.
- Increases in HDL (“good” cholesterol) after green coffee bean extract consumption are significant in green coffee bean extract dosages ≥400mg/day.
About blood glucose and insulin…
- Green coffee extract supplementation significantly improved fasting blood sugar levels
- Green coffee extract supplementation at ≥400 mg/day significantly lowered postprandial insulin levels (that’s good)
Want to try some?
We don’t sell it, but here for your convenience is an example product on Amazon 😎
Enjoy!
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Dealing With Hearing Loss
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.
Hearing is important, not only for convenience, but also for cognitive health—as an inability to participate in what for most people is an important part of social life, has been shown to accelerate cognitive decline:
14 Powerful Strategies To Prevent Dementia ← one of them is looking after your hearing
To this end, we’ve written before about ways to retain (or at least slow the loss of) your hearing, here:
But, what if, despite our best efforts, your hearing is declining regardless, or is already impaired in some way?
Working with the hand we’ve been dealt
So, your hearing is bad and/or deteriorating. Assuming you’ve ruled out possibilities of fixing it, the next step is how to manage this new state of affairs.
One thing to seriously consider, sooner than you think you need to, is using hearing aids. This is because they will not only help you in the obvious practical way, but also, they will slow the associated decline of the parts of your brain that process the language you hear:
ACHIEVE study finds hearing aids cut cognitive decline by 48%
…and here’s the paper itself:
Furthermore, hearing aid use can significantly reduce all-cause mortality:
Your ears are not the only organs
Remember, today’s about dealing with hearing loss, not preventing it (for preventing it, see the second link we dropped up top).
With this in mind: do not underestimate the usefulness of learning to lipread.
Lipreading is not a panacea; it has its limitations:
- You can’t lipread an audio-only phonecall, or a podcast, or the radio
- You can’t lipread a video call if the video quality is poor
- You can’t lipread if someone is wearing a mask (as in many healthcare settings)
- You can’t lipread multiple people at once; you have to choose whose mouth to watch (or at least, you will miss the first word(s) each time while switching)
- You can’t lipread during sex if your/their face is somewhere else (may seem like a silly example, but actually communication can be important in sex, and the number of times this writer has had to say “Say again?” in intimate moments is ridiculous)
However, it can also make a huge difference the rest of the time, and can even be a superpower in times/places when other people’s hearing is nullified, such as a noisy environment, or a video call in which someone’s mic isn’t working.
The good news is, it’s really very easy to learn to lipread. There are many valid ways (often involving consciously memorizing mouth-shapes from charts, and then putting them together one by one to build a vocabulary), but this writer recommends a more organic, less effort-intensive approach:
- Choose a video of someone who speaks clearly, and for which video you already know what is being said (such as by using subtitles first, or a transcript, or perhaps the person is delivering a famous speech or reciting a poem that you know well, or it’s your favorite movie that you’ve watched many times).
- Now watch it with the sound off (assuming you do normally have some hearing; if you don’t, then you’re probably ahead of the game here) and just pay close attention to the lips. Do this on repeat; soon you’ll be able to “hear” the sounds as you see them made.
- Now choose a video of someone who speaks clearly, for which video you do not already know what is being said. You’ll probably only get parts of it at first; that’s ok.
- Now learn the rest of what they said in that video (by reading a transcript or such), and use it like you used the first video.
- Now repeat steps 3 and 4 until you are lipreading most people easily unless there is some clear obfuscation preventing you.
This process should not take long, as there are only about 44 phonemes (distinct sounds) in English, and once you’ve learned them, you’re set. If you speak more languages, those same 44 phonemes should cover most of most of them, but if not, just repeat the above process with the next language.
Remember, if you have at least some hearing, then most of the time your lipreading and your hearing are going to be working together, and neither will be as strong without the other—but if necessary, well-practised lipreading can indeed often stand in for hearing when hearing isn’t available.
A note on sign language:
Sign language is great, and cool, and useful. However, it’s only as useful as the people who know it, which means that it’s top-tier in the Deaf community (where people will dodge hearing-related cognitive decline entirely, because their social interaction is predominantly signed rather than spoken), and can be useful with close friends or family members who learn it (or at least learn some), but isn’t as useful in most of the wider world when people don’t know it. But if you do want to learn it, don’t let that hold you back—be the change you want to see!
Most of our readers are American, so here’s a good starting place for American Sign Language ← this is a list of mostly-free resources
Enjoy!
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Jasmine McDonald’s Ballet Stretching Routine
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.
Why Jasmine’s Video is Useful
Jasmine McDonald is not only a professional ballerina, but is also a certified personal trainer, so when it comes to keeping her body strong and flexible, she’s a wealth of knowledge. Her video (below) is a great example of this.
In case you’re interested in learning more, she currently (privately) tutors over 30 people on a day-to-day basis. You can contact her here!
Other Stretches?
If you think that Jasmine’s stretches may be out of your league, we recommend checking out our other articles on stretching, including:
- 11 Minutes to Pain-Free Hips
- How to Permanently Loosen a Tight Psoas
- Stretching Scientifically
- Stretching & Mobility
- Stretching to Stay Young
Otherwise, let loose on these dancer stretches and exercises:
How did you find that video? If you’ve discovered any great videos yourself that you’d like to share with fellow 10almonds readers, then please do email them to us!
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Vitamin D2 vs Vitamin D3: What You Would Benefit From Knowing
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.
It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!
Have a question or a request? We love to hear from you!
In cases where we’ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future too—there’s always more to say!
As ever: if the question/request can be answered briefly, we’ll do it here in our Q&A Thursday edition. If not, we’ll make a main feature of it shortly afterwards!
So, no question/request too big or small 😎
❝Hi, is there any important difference between vitamin d2 and vitamin d3? Is one better than the other?❞
There is indeed! And one is better than the other!
Where they come from
You’ll find a lot of sources that will tell you “Vitamin D2 is from plants, D3 is from animals”, and in fact only the second half of that is true.
In nature, there are no plants that are known to produce vitamin D.
Vitamin D2, however, is produced by many fungi, as well as algae, neither of which are part of the Kingdom Plantae.
Vitamin D3, meanwhile, is produced by many animals (including humans).
When “the sun” is sometimes considered a source of vitamin D, that’s true only insofar as the sun is also a source of tomatoes, for example, which required the sun to grow. While we humans (and other animals) cannot photosynthesize in general, producing vitamin D is something we can do if exposed to UV light (such as from the sun).
However, of course exposure to UV light (such as from the sun) comes with other problems, so… Should we get sun exposure or not?
We weighed up the balance of evidence, here: The Sun Exposure Dilemma
If, like this writer, you are a mostly crepuscular being who avoids the sun, we have good news: mushrooms can do the sunbathing for us!
❝Exposing mushrooms to UV (from sunlight or in a laboratory) increases the amount of vitamin D in mushrooms by nearly eightfold. Putting five store-bought button mushrooms in the sun, or just one portobello mushroom, produces 24 µg of vitamin D, which translates to nearly 1000 international units, providing the amount of vitamin D one needs in an entire day, and the equivalent found in most vitamin D supplements.
If you’re wondering if the vitamin D from mushrooms actually makes it into your bloodstream, it does. A recent meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials showed that tanned (UV-exposed) mushrooms may be effective in increasing active vitamin D levels in adults with low levels of vitamin D, and studies (randomised controlled trials) have shown that it may be just as effective as supplements at increasing vitamin D levels in the blood (here, and here).
Some research is very positive, saying that putting your mushrooms in direct sunlight for 10–15 minutes may provide you with 100% of your daily vitamin D needs, and the vitamin D content in sunlight-exposed mushrooms may be retained with refrigeration for up to 8 days.
The production of vitamin D may be increased by a further 30% by placing them in the sun with the underside, or gills, facing up, or by 60% if you slice them.❞
Read all about it: Tan your mushrooms, not your skin
Which is better?
In few words: D3 is better.
They both do the exact same job, but with D3, you simply get more bang-for-buck:
❝The WMD in change in total 25(OH)D based on 12 daily dosed vitamin D2-vitamin D3 comparisons, analyzed using liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry, was 10.39 nmol/L (40%) lower for the vitamin D2 group compared with the vitamin D3 group.
Vitamin D3 leads to a greater increase of 25(OH)D than vitamin D2, even if limited to daily dose studies, but vitamin D2 and vitamin D3 had similar positive impacts on their corresponding 25(OH)D hydroxylated forms.❞
Note: “WMD” here means “weighted mean difference”, not “weapons of mass destruction”
About that “and importance of BMI”, by the way: in persons with a BMI >25, there was no longer a difference between the two forms. Literally, no difference at all; the difference was reduced to 0%.
Another study found similarly, but with different numbers (finding a greater difference), and without recording BMI as a factor:
❝D3 is approximately 87% more potent in raising and maintaining serum 25(OH)D concentrations and produces 2- to 3-fold greater storage of vitamin D than does equimolar D2.❞
See the paper: Vitamin D3 Is More Potent Than Vitamin D2 in Humans
“Well that sucks, because I’m vegan”
Fear not, you can get vegan D3 too.
Much like “you can’t get vegan B12” (but you can; it’s made by yeast), there are vegan D3 supplements, made by lichen.
The trouble with lichen, when it comes to classifying it, it that it’s actually a hybrid colony of many small, strange things (beyond the scope of this article, but they are fascinating, so this writer is holding herself back by the scruff of the neck from explaining in detail), some of which are technically part of Kingdom Animalia, but it is hard to find even the most ardent vegan who will object to consuming bacteria, for example.
Want to try some?
We don’t sell it, but here for your convenience is an example product on Amazon 😎
But watch out with the doses, if supplementing vitamin D in either form, because…
Vit D + Calcium: Too Much Of A Good Thing? ← this also talks about safe and effective doses, and what goes wrong if you take too much
Take care!
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Quit Drinking – by Rebecca Dolton
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.
Many “quit drinking” books focus on tips you’ve heard already—cut down like this, rearrange your habits like that, make yourself accountable like so, add a reward element this way, etc.
Dolton takes a different approach.
She focuses instead on the underlying processes of addiction, so as to not merely understand them to fight them, but also to use them against the addiction itself.
This is not just a social or behavioral analysis, by the way, and goes into some detail into the physiological factors of the addiction—including such things as the little-talked about relationship between addiction and gut flora. Candida albans, found in most if not all humans to some extent, gets really out of control when given certain kinds of sugars (including those from alcohol); it grows, eventually puts roots through the intestinal walls (ouch!) and the more it grows, the more it demands the sugars it craves, so the more you feed it.
Quite a motivator to not listen to such cravings! It’s not even you that wants it, it’s the Candida!
Anyway, that’s just one example; there are many. The point here is that this is a well-researched, well-written book that sets itself apart from many of its genre.
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:
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Dealing With Hearing Loss
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.
Hearing is important, not only for convenience, but also for cognitive health—as an inability to participate in what for most people is an important part of social life, has been shown to accelerate cognitive decline:
14 Powerful Strategies To Prevent Dementia ← one of them is looking after your hearing
To this end, we’ve written before about ways to retain (or at least slow the loss of) your hearing, here:
But, what if, despite our best efforts, your hearing is declining regardless, or is already impaired in some way?
Working with the hand we’ve been dealt
So, your hearing is bad and/or deteriorating. Assuming you’ve ruled out possibilities of fixing it, the next step is how to manage this new state of affairs.
One thing to seriously consider, sooner than you think you need to, is using hearing aids. This is because they will not only help you in the obvious practical way, but also, they will slow the associated decline of the parts of your brain that process the language you hear:
ACHIEVE study finds hearing aids cut cognitive decline by 48%
…and here’s the paper itself:
Furthermore, hearing aid use can significantly reduce all-cause mortality:
Your ears are not the only organs
Remember, today’s about dealing with hearing loss, not preventing it (for preventing it, see the second link we dropped up top).
With this in mind: do not underestimate the usefulness of learning to lipread.
Lipreading is not a panacea; it has its limitations:
- You can’t lipread an audio-only phonecall, or a podcast, or the radio
- You can’t lipread a video call if the video quality is poor
- You can’t lipread if someone is wearing a mask (as in many healthcare settings)
- You can’t lipread multiple people at once; you have to choose whose mouth to watch (or at least, you will miss the first word(s) each time while switching)
- You can’t lipread during sex if your/their face is somewhere else (may seem like a silly example, but actually communication can be important in sex, and the number of times this writer has had to say “Say again?” in intimate moments is ridiculous)
However, it can also make a huge difference the rest of the time, and can even be a superpower in times/places when other people’s hearing is nullified, such as a noisy environment, or a video call in which someone’s mic isn’t working.
The good news is, it’s really very easy to learn to lipread. There are many valid ways (often involving consciously memorizing mouth-shapes from charts, and then putting them together one by one to build a vocabulary), but this writer recommends a more organic, less effort-intensive approach:
- Choose a video of someone who speaks clearly, and for which video you already know what is being said (such as by using subtitles first, or a transcript, or perhaps the person is delivering a famous speech or reciting a poem that you know well, or it’s your favorite movie that you’ve watched many times).
- Now watch it with the sound off (assuming you do normally have some hearing; if you don’t, then you’re probably ahead of the game here) and just pay close attention to the lips. Do this on repeat; soon you’ll be able to “hear” the sounds as you see them made.
- Now choose a video of someone who speaks clearly, for which video you do not already know what is being said. You’ll probably only get parts of it at first; that’s ok.
- Now learn the rest of what they said in that video (by reading a transcript or such), and use it like you used the first video.
- Now repeat steps 3 and 4 until you are lipreading most people easily unless there is some clear obfuscation preventing you.
This process should not take long, as there are only about 44 phonemes (distinct sounds) in English, and once you’ve learned them, you’re set. If you speak more languages, those same 44 phonemes should cover most of most of them, but if not, just repeat the above process with the next language.
Remember, if you have at least some hearing, then most of the time your lipreading and your hearing are going to be working together, and neither will be as strong without the other—but if necessary, well-practised lipreading can indeed often stand in for hearing when hearing isn’t available.
A note on sign language:
Sign language is great, and cool, and useful. However, it’s only as useful as the people who know it, which means that it’s top-tier in the Deaf community (where people will dodge hearing-related cognitive decline entirely, because their social interaction is predominantly signed rather than spoken), and can be useful with close friends or family members who learn it (or at least learn some), but isn’t as useful in most of the wider world when people don’t know it. But if you do want to learn it, don’t let that hold you back—be the change you want to see!
Most of our readers are American, so here’s a good starting place for American Sign Language ← this is a list of mostly-free resources
Enjoy!
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:
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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:
