Guava vs Strawberries – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing guava to strawberries, we picked the guava.
Why?
A straightforward one today:
In terms of macros, guava has nearly 3x the fiber, approximately 2x the carbs, and more than 2x the protein, making it the all-round more nutrient-dense option in the macros category.
In the category of vitamins, guava has more of vitamins A, B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, B7, B9, C, E, K, and choline, while strawberries are not higher in any vitamin. A complete win for guava.
When it comes to minerals, guava has more calcium, copper, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, and zinc, while strawberries have more iron and manganese. Another overwhelming win for guava.
Looking at phytochemicals, both are very good, but guava has more polyphenols in total by far.
Adding up the sections makes for a clear overall win for guava, but by all means enjoy either or both; diversity is good!
Want to learn more?
You might like:
What’s Your Plant Diversity Score?
Enjoy!
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Working After 50? You May Have 92% Chance Of This Sleep Disorder
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When it comes to healthy living, people usually think about diet and exercise first. And those things are important, but they are nothing without good sleep.
See for example: These Top Few Things Make The Biggest Difference To Health
It’s also important to mention that, contrary to popular belief, we don’t need less sleep in older age: Why You Probably Need More Sleep ← a lot of people mistake getting 6 hours sleep per night for only needing 6 hours sleep per night.
Sure, you may still be alive after regularly getting 6 hours, but (unless you have a rare mutation of the ADRB1 gene) it will be causing harm, and yes, that includes later in life; we don’t stop needing so much sleep, even if we stop getting it.
It’s also noteworthy that sleep-deprived people usually underestimate how sleep-deprived they are. This is for the same reason as why drunk people usually underestimate how drunk they are—to put it in words that go for both situations: a cognitively impaired person lacks the cognitive function to realize how cognitively impaired they are. Here’s the science on that: How Sleep-Deprived Are You, Really?
When you’re on the clock…
Researchers (Dr. Belinda Steffan et al.) combined 1,901 self-reported health and workplace surveys with over 5,258 days of smartwatch sleep and activity data, from workers aged 50–66 working across different sectors, in a year-long study.
Since the methodology was purely observational, there’s not a lot to say about that part, so we’ll take the liberty of diving straight into the main findings:
- Sleep problems were more prevalent than you might think: nearly 70% of participants had persistent, clinically significant sleep problems throughout the study, even though none had a sleep disorder diagnosis
- About that last thing, it gets worse: around 92% met the diagnostic criteria for a sleep disorder at least once during the year.
- Sleep quality mattered more than sleep length: most participants slept between 6.5 and 8 hours per night, but wearable devices showed that frequent awakenings and disrupted sleep—as opposed to simply getting too little sleep in total—were the main problem.
- Yes, nighttime awakenings were extremely common: smartwatch data showed that 90% of participants experienced ongoing sleep disturbances during the study.
This latter makes us think about: How Regularity Of Sleep Can Be Even More Important Than Duration
There were also some secondary findings that are a little more nuanced than a generic plea to try to sleep better:
- Work stress was strongly linked to worse sleep: analysis identified workplace experiences as one of the strongest factors associated with both sleep disruption and overall well-being.
- Better work-life balance predicted better health: this one feels obvious but it’s good to have the data for it, and yes, participants who reported healthier work-life balance and greater job satisfaction consistently had higher wellbeing scores.
- Negative workplace emotions were associated with poorer wellbeing: this one sounds like a redundant tautology repeated more than once unnecessarily, but to make it clear, feeling gloomy, irritated, or tense at work was consistently linked to lower mental wellbeing.
So, that makes it wise to consider such factors as: What’s Really Keeping You Awake? The Brain’s Role in Sleepless Nights
To read this paper in full, enjoy: Interrelations of work with health and wellbeing on a 50+ year old workforce assessed using longitudinal self-reports and actigraphy
Want to boost your sleep?
Some sleep aids can help, but many are harmful and/or do not really work as such; here’s a rundown of examples of those: Safe Effective Sleep Aids For Seniors?
And when it comes to napping, timing is everything: How To Nap Like A Pro (No More “Sleep Hangovers”!)
Want to learn more?
Here are three key articles that contain a lot of valuable information:
- Get Better Sleep: Beyond The Basics
- Calculate (And Enjoy) The Perfect Night’s Sleep
- 10 Tips for Better Sleep: Starting In The Morning
…as well as pointers to other relevant articles.
And for a much more in-depth treatment of the topic, you might like this book that we reviewed a while back:
Why We Sleep – by Dr Matthew Walker
Basically, if you will read only one book on sleep, that’s the book.
Sweet dreams!
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Chickpeas vs Black-Eyed Peas – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing chickpeas to black-eyed peas, we picked the chickpeas.
Why?
In terms of macros, chickpeas have more protein, carbs, and fiber, the ratio of the latter two also giving them the lower glycemic index. An easy win for chickpeas.
In the category of vitamins, chickpeas have more of vitamins B2, B6, C, E, K, and choline, while black-eyed peas have more of vitamins B1, B5, and B9. Another victory for chickpeas.
When it comes to minerals, things are even more pronounced: chickpeas have more calcium, copper, iron, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, and zinc, while black-eyed peas have (barely) more magnesium. An overwhelming win for chickpeas.
Adding up the sections makes for a very evident overall win for chickpeas; as ever, do enjoy either or both though; diversity is good!
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
What’s Your Plant Diversity Score?
Enjoy!
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Artichoke vs Bamboo Shoots – Which is Healthier?
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 Verdict
When comparing artichoke to bamboo shoots, we picked the artichoke.
Why?
Both have their merits, but there is a clear winner:
In terms of macros, artichoke has more than 2x the fiber, for a little under 2x the carbs, and more protein, making it the more nutrient-dense option in this category.
In the category of vitamins, artichoke has more of vitamins B3, B5, B7, B9, C, and K, while bamboo has more of vitamins B1, B6, and E, yielding a 6:3 victory to artichoke here.
Looking at minerals, artichoke has more calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, and phosphorus, while bamboo has more potassium, selenium, and zinc, giving a 5:3 win to artichoke in this round.
In other considerations, artichoke is also higher in polyphenols, so that’s another point in its favor too.
Adding up the sections makes for a clear overall win for artichoke, but by all means do enjoy either or both, as diversity is best!
Want to learn more?
You might like:
Don’t Be Bamboozled By Bamboo! ← including how to eat bamboo, for those unfamiliar with such, as we have been asked about it 🙂
Enjoy!
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Never Enough – by Dr. Judith Grisel
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We’ve reviewed books about addiction before—specifically about alcohol, at least. This one’s more general in that it covers different addictions.
On the other hand, it’s also more specific, in that it covers them from the author’s field: neuroscience.
…and experience too. The author had a plethora of addictions (the serious kind), got sober, and then undertook to study neuroscience. Her hope was to help others avoid, or escape from the same as‚ what she went through.
Dr. Grisel (as she now is) takes a methodical approach in this book. She works her way through the addictive mechanisms of a broad selection of common drugs, explaining each.
The focus here is on neutral explanations, rather than the propagandizing scaremongering that failed at least one generation. Why each drug is alluring, what it really does do—and the neurological price it exacts, down to the molecular level.
She also covers risk factors for addiction; genetic, epigenetic, and environmental. There’s no “if you were stronger”, or “these people made bad choices”, so much as… Many addicts were, in effect, sabotaged from before birth.
That doesn’t mean that to become addicted or not is just fate, but it does mean… There but for the grace of factors completely outside of our control go we.
Why is this useful to us, be we a reader without any meaningful addiction (we’re not counting coffee etc here)? Well, as this book illustrates and explains, many of us could be one (more) mishap away from a crippling addiction and not know it. Forewarned is forearmed.
Bottom line: almost all of us are, have been, or will be touched by addiction in some way. Either directly, or a loved one, or a loved one’s loved one, or perhaps a parent who gave us an epigenetic misfortune. This book gives understanding that can help.
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Thinner Leaner Stronger – by Michael Matthews
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First, the elephant in the training room: this book does assume that you want to be thinner, leaner, and stronger. This is the companion book, written for women, to “Bigger, Stronger, Leaner”, which was written for men. Statistically, these assumptions are reasonable, even if the generalizations are imperfect. Also, this reviewer has a gripe with anything selling “thinner”. Leaner was already sufficient, and “stronger” is the key element here, so “thinner” is just marketing, and marketing something that’s often not unhealthy, to sell a book that’s actually full of good advice for building a healthy body.
In other words: don’t judge a book by the cover, however eyeroll-worthy it may be.
The book is broadly aimed at middle-aged readers, but boasts equal worth for young and old alike. If there’s something Matthews knows how to do well in his writing, it’s hedging his bets.
As for what’s in the book: it’s diet and exercise advice, aimed at long-term implementation (i.e. not a crash course, but a lifestyle change), for maximum body composition change results while not doing anything silly (like many extreme short-term courses do) and not compromising other aspects of one’s health, while also not taking up an inordinate amount of time.
The dietary advice is sensible, broadly consistent with what we’d advise here, and/but if you want to maximise your body composition change results, you’re going to need a pocket calculator (or be better than this writer is at mental arithmetic).
The exercise advice is detailed, and a lot more specific than “lift things”; there are programs of specifically how many sets and reps and so forth, and when to increase the weights and when not to.
A strength of this book is that it explains why all those numbers are what they are, instead of just expecting the reader to take on faith that the best for a given exercise is (for example) 3 sets of 8–10 reps of 70–75% of one’s single-rep max for that exercise. Because without the explanation, those numbers would seem very arbitrary indeed, and that wouldn’t help anyone stick with the program. And so on, for any advice he gives.
The style is… A little flashy for this reader’s taste, a little salesy (and yes he does try to upsell to his personal coaching, but really, anything you need is in the book already), but when it comes down to it, all that gym-boy bravado doesn’t take away from the fact his advice is sound and helpful.
Bottom line: if you would like your body to be the three things mentioned in the title, this book can certainly help you get there.
Click here to check out Thinner Leaner Stronger, and become thinner, leaner, stronger!
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Health Hacks from 20 Doctors
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Doctor Mike’s Approach
You may be used to Tuesday’s expert insights column, where we break down the work or research of a medical expert. Doctor Mike, the creator of the video below, has put us to shame, interviewing 20 experts and condensing it into one, sub 12-minute video.
In short, Doctor Mike has interviewed medical professionals and asked them to share a unique piece of advice, specific to their field, that’s easy to incorporate into your daily routine. He calls them Health Hacks (hey, that sounds similar to our Life Hacks section).
We aren’t going to list out all 20—you’ll have to watch the video for that—but here are a few of our favourites
Toenail Fungus Treatment
Dr. Dana Brems, a podiatrist, reveals that Vicks VapoRub has antifungal properties, and thus can be used on toenails affected by fungus.
Water Intake Myth
Dr. Rena Malik, a urologist, debunks the myth that everyone needs to drink eight glasses of water daily, advising people to drink when thirsty and monitor urine color for hydration.
(You can see what we’ve written on this subject here, as well as here).
Natural Lip Plumper
Dr. Anthony Youn, a plastic surgeon, offers a simple recipe for plumping lips—add a drop or two of food-grade peppermint oil to your lip gloss.
Toothbrushing Technique:
Dr. Winters, an orthodontist, explains that brushing teeth at a 45-degree angle towards the gums is more effective than the common side-to-side method. See our thoughts on this here and here.
Want more tips? Watch them all in the video below:
How was the 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!
Don’t Forget…
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