Guinness Is Good For You*
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Guinness Is Good For You*
*This is our myth-buster edition, so maybe best not take that at face value!
To this day, writing the words “Guinness is” into Google will autocomplete to “Guinness is good for you”. The ad campaign proclaiming such launched about a hundred years ago, and was based on Guinness as it was when it was launched another hundred years before that.
Needless to say, none of this was based on modern science.
Is there any grain of truth?
Perhaps its strongest health claim, in terms of what stands up to modern scrutiny, is that it does contain some B vitamins. Famously (as it was once given to pregnant women in Ireland on the strength of such) it contains folate (also known as Vitamin B9). How much?
A 15oz glass of Guinness contains 12.8µg of folate, which is 3.2% of the RDA. In other words, you could get all the folate your body needs by drinking just 32 glasses of Guinness per day.
With that in mind, you might want to get the non-alcoholic version!
“I heard you could live on just Guinness and oranges, because it contains everything but vitamin C?”
The real question is: how long could you live? Otherwise, a facetious answer here could be akin to the “fun fact” that you can drink lava… once.
Guinness is missing many essential amino acids and fatty acids, several vitamins, and many minerals. Exactly what it’s missing may vary slightly from region to region, as while the broad recipe is the same, some processes add or remove some extra micronutrients.
As to what you’d die of first, for obvious reasons there have been no studies done on this, but our money would be on liver failure.
It would also wreak absolute havoc with your kidneys, but kidneys are tricky beasts—you can be down to 10% functionality and unaware that anything’s wrong yet. So we think liver failure would get you first.
(Need that 0.0% alcohol Guinness link again? Here it is)
Fun fact: Top contender in the category of “whole food” is actually seaweed (make sure you don’t get too much iodine, though)!
Or, should we say, top natural contender. Because foods that have been designed by humans to contain everything we need and more for optimized health, such as Huel, do exactly what they say on the tin.
And in case you’re curious…
Read: what bare minimum nutrients do you really need, to survive?
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It’s Not Hysteria – by Dr. Karen Tan
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Firstly, who this book is aimed at: in case it wasn’t clear, this book assumes you have, or at least have had, a uterus. If that’s not you, then well, it’ll still be an interesting read but it won’t be about your reproductive health.
Secondly, about that “reproductive health”: it’s mostly not actually about reproductive health literally, but rather, the health of one’s reproductive organs and the things that they affect—which is a lot more than the ability to reproduce!
Dr. Tang takes us on a (respectably in-depth) tour of the relevant anatomy, before moving on to physiology, before continuing to pathology (i.e. things that can go wrong, and often do), and finally various treatment options, including elective procedures, and the pros and cons thereof.
She also talks the reader through talking about things with gynecologists and other healthcare providers, and making sure concerns are not dismissed out-of-hand (something that happens a lot, of course).
The style throughout is quite detailed prose, but without being difficult at all to read, and (assuming one is interested in the topic) it’s very engaging.
Bottom line: if you would like to know more about uteri and everything that is (or commonly/unfortunately) can be attached to them, the effects they have on the rest of the body and health, and what can be done about things not being quite right, then this is a good book for that.
Click here to check out It’s Not Hysteria, and understand more of what’s going on down there!
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Ready… Set… Flow!
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Time to make your new year plans? Or maybe you’ve already made a list, and you’re checking it twice. If so, now’s the time to make sure that your new year’s plans will flow:
“Flow”, as you may be aware, is the psychological state generally defined as “a state in which we feel good about what we’re doing, and just keep doing it, at a peak performance level”; the term was coined by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and has risen to popularity since.
We wrote about it a little before, here:
Morning Routines That Just Flow
The above article details how to start the perfect day, but how to start the perfect year? Firstly, it’s good to get the jump on the new year a little; see:
The Science Of New Year’s Pre-Resolutions
…and we also agree with Dr. Faye Bate, who preaches taking the path of least resistance when it comes to healthy habits:
How To Actually Start A Healthy Lifestyle In The New Year
Because…
Getting into the flow
The most hydrating drink is the one that [contains adequate water and] you will actually drink. The best exercise is the one you’ll do. The best sleep is the sleep you can actually get. And so on.
We see this—or rather its evil counterpoint—a lot in diet culture. People frame their willpower against the temptations of donuts and whatever, and make Faustian bargains whereby they will eat food they find boring in the hopes it will bring them good health. And it won’t. Because, they’ll give up quickly.
Instead, each part of our healthy life has to be engaged with with a sense of flow. Again, that’s: “a state in which we feel good about what we’re doing, and just keep doing it, at a peak performance level”
So we need to find healthy recipes we like (check out our recipe section!), we need to find exercise that we like, we need to find an approach to sleep that the Geneva Convention wouldn’t consider a kind a torture, and so forth. And, ideally, not just “like” in the sense of “this is tolerable” but “like” in the sense of “I am truly passionate about this thing”.
And that’s going to look different for each of us.
Running is a great example of something that some people truly love, whereas others will do almost anything to avoid.
And food? We’ve written before about the usefulness of a “to don’t” list; it’s like a “to do” list, but it’s things we’re not going to even try to do. For example, a person with two addictions is usually advised to quit one at a time, so quitting the other would go on a “to don’t” list for now. The same goes for food; you need to enjoy what you’re eating or you won’t “feel good about what we’re doing, and just keep doing it”, per flow. So, do not deprive yourself; it won’t work anyway; just pick one healthy change to make, and then queue up any other changes for once the first one has started feeling natural to you.
For more on “to don’t” lists and other such tricks, see: How To Keep On Keeping On… Long Term!
Staying in the flow
…is not usually a problem, you would think, because “…and just keep doing it, at peak performance level” but the fact is, sometimes we get kicked out of our flow by something external. We covered some of that in the above-linked “How To Keep On Keeping On” article, such as figuring out showstoppers in advance (for example, “if I get an injury, I will rest until it is healed”) and ideally, back-up plans.
For example, let’s say you have your dietary plan all worked out, then you are invited to someone’s birthday celebration a couple of weeks in, and you don’t want to rain on their parade, so you figure out for yourself in advance how you are going to mitigate any harm to your plans, e.g. “I will simply choose the healthiest option available, and not worry if it doesn’t meet my usual standards” or “I will simply fast” if that’s an appropriate thing for you (for some it might be, for some it might not be).
For more on this, see:
How To Avoid Slipping Into (Bad) Old Habits
Take care!
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Progesterone Menopausal HRT: When, Why, And How To Benefit
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Progesterone doesn’t get talked about as much as other sex hormones, so what’s its deal? Dr. Heather Hirsch explains:
Menopausal progesterone
Dr. Hirsch considers progesterone essential for menopausal women who are taking estrogen and have an intact uterus, to keep conditions at bay such as endometriosis or even uterine cancer.
However, she advises it is not critical in those without a uterus, unless there was a previous case of one of the above conditions.
10almonds addition: on the other hand, progesterone can still be beneficial from a metabolic and body composition standpoint, so do speak with your endocrinologist about it.
As an extra bonus: while not soporific (it won’t make you sleepy), taking progesterone at night will improve the quality of your sleep once you do sleep, so that’s a worthwhile thing for many!
Dr. Hirsch also discusses the merits of continuous vs cyclic use; continuous maintains the above sleep benefits, for example, while cyclic use can help stabilize menstrual patterns in late perimenopause and early menopause.
For more on these things, plus discussion of different types of progesterone, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
- What Does “Balance Your Hormones” Even Mean?
- What You Should Have Been Told About The Menopause Beforehand
- HRT: Bioidentical vs Animal – A Tale Of Two Approaches
Take care!
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New study suggests weight loss drugs like Ozempic could help with knee pain. Here’s why there may be a link
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The drug semaglutide, commonly known by the brand names Ozempic or Wegovy, was originally developed to help people with type 2 diabetes manage their blood sugar levels.
However, researchers have discovered it may help with other health issues, too. Clinical trials show semaglutide can be effective for weight loss, and hundreds of thousands of people around the world are using it for this purpose.
Evidence has also shown the drug can help manage heart failure and chronic kidney disease in people with obesity and type 2 diabetes.
Now, a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine has suggested semaglutide can improve knee pain in people with obesity and osteoarthritis. So what did this study find, and how could semaglutide and osteoarthritis pain be linked?
Pormezz/Shutterstock Osteoarthritis and obesity
Osteoarthritis is a common joint disease, affecting 2.1 million Australians. Most people with osteoarthritis have pain and find it difficult to perform common daily activities such as walking. The knee is the joint most commonly affected by osteoarthritis.
Being overweight or obese is a major risk factor for osteoarthritis in the knee. The link between the two conditions is complex. It involves a combination of increased load on the knee, metabolic factors such as high cholesterol and high blood sugar, and inflammation.
For example, elevated blood sugar levels increase the production of inflammatory molecules in the body, which can damage the cartilage in the knee, and lead to the development of osteoarthritis.
Weight loss is strongly recommended to reduce the pain of knee osteoarthritis in people who are overweight or obese. International and Australian guidelines suggest losing as little as 5% of body weight can help.
But losing weight with just diet and exercise can be difficult for many people. One study from the United Kingdom found the annual probability of people with obesity losing 5% or more of their body weight was less than one in ten.
Semaglutide has recently entered the market as a potential alternative route to weight loss. It comes from a class of drugs known as GLP-1 receptor agonists and works by increasing a person’s sense of fullness.
Semaglutide for osteoarthritis?
The rationale for the recent study was that while we know weight loss alleviates symptoms of knee osteoarthritis, the effect of GLP-1 receptor agonists was yet to be explored. So the researchers set out to understand what effect semaglutide might have on knee osteoarthritis pain, alongside body weight.
They randomly allocated 407 people with obesity and moderate osteoarthritis into one of two groups. One group received semaglutide once a week, while the other group received a placebo. Both groups were treated for 68 weeks and received counselling on diet and physical activity. At the end of the treatment phase, researchers measured changes in knee pain, function, and body weight.
As expected, those taking semaglutide lost more weight than those in the placebo group. People on semaglutide lost around 13% of their body weight on average, while those taking the placebo lost around 3% on average. More than 70% of people in the semaglutide group lost at least 10% of their body weight compared to just over 9% of people in the placebo group.
Osteoarthritis of the knee is the most common type of osteoarthritis. SKT Studio/Shutterstock The study found semaglutide reduced knee pain significantly more than the placebo. Participants who took semaglutide reported an additional 14-point reduction in pain on a 0–100 scale compared to the placebo group.
This is much greater than the pain reduction in another recent study among people with obesity and knee osteoarthritis. This study investigated the effects of a diet and exercise program compared to an attention control (where participants are provided with information about nutrition and physical activity). The results here saw only a 3-point difference between the intervention group and the control group on the same scale.
The amount of pain relief reported in the semaglutide trial is also larger than that reported with commonly used pain medicines such as anti-inflammatories, opioids and antidepressants.
Semaglutide also improved knee function compared to the placebo. For example, people who took semaglutide could walk about 42 meters further than those on the placebo in a six-minute walking test.
How could semaglutide reduce knee pain?
It’s not fully clear how semaglutide helps with knee pain from osteoarthritis. One explanation may be that when a person loses weight, there’s less stress on the joints, which reduces pain.
But recent studies have also suggested semaglutide and other GLP-1 receptor agonists might have anti-inflammatory properties, and could even protect against cartilage wear and tear.
While the results of this new study are promising, it’s too soon to regard semaglutide as a “miracle drug” for knee osteoarthritis. And as this study was funded by the drug company that makes semaglutide, it will be important to have independent studies in the future, to confirm the findings, or not.
The study also had strict criteria, excluding some groups, such as those taking opioids for knee pain. One in seven Australians seeing a GP for their knee osteoarthritis are prescribed opioids. Most participants in the trial were white (61%) and women (82%). This means the study may not fully represent the average person with knee osteoarthritis and obesity.
It’s also important to consider semaglutide can have a range of side effects, including gastrointestinal symptoms and fatigue.
There are some concerns that semaglutide could reduce muscle mass and bone density, though we’re still learning more about this.
Further, it can be difficult to access.
I have knee osteoarthritis, what should I do?
Osteoarthritis is a disease caused by multiple factors, and it’s important to take a multifaceted approach to managing it. Weight loss is an important component for those who are overweight or obese, but so are other aspects of self-management. This might include physical activity, pacing strategies, and other positive lifestyle changes such as improving sleep, healthy eating, and so on.
Giovanni E. Ferreira, NHMRC Emerging Leader Research Fellow, Institute of Musculoskeletal Health, University of Sydney and Christina Abdel Shaheed, Associate Professor, School of Public Health, University of Sydney
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Natto, Taurine + Black Pepper, And Other Game-Changers
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It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!
Have a question or a request? You can always hit “reply” to any of our emails, or use the feedback widget at the bottom!
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
❝Loved the info on nuts; of course I always eat pecans, which didn’t make the list of healthy nuts!❞
Dear subscriber, pardon the paraphrase of your comment—somehow it got deleted and now exists only in this writer’s memory. However, to address it:
Pecans are great too! We can’t include everything in every article (indeed, we got another feedback the same day saying the article was too long), but we love when you come to us with stuff for us to look at and write about (seriously, writer here: the more you ask, the easier it makes my job), so let’s talk pecans for a moment:
Pecans would have been number six on our list if we’d have written more!
Like many nuts, they’ve an abundance of healthy fats, fiber, vitamins, and minerals.
They’re particularly good for zinc, which is vital for immune function, healing (including normal recovery after normal exercise), and DNA synthesis (so: anti-aging).
Pecans are also great for reducing LDL (“bad” cholesterol) and triglycerides (which are also bad for heart health); check it out:
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Which B Vitamins? It Makes A Difference
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Everyone knows “B vitamins are for energy!” and that is definitely a theme, but there’s a lot more to it than that, and in some cases, there are big mistakes that people make when it comes to supplementing their diet.
First, let’s do a quick overview of what each of the B vitamins do, by number, and putting names to them:
B1 (Thiamine)
- Function: helps convert carbohydrates into energy, supports nerve function
- Forms: thiamine hydrochloride, thiamine mononitrate, benfotiamine (fat-soluble form)
- Example foods: lentils, sunflower seeds
B2 (Riboflavin)
- Function: supports energy production, skin health, and eye function, turns your pee fluorescent yellow (the latter is really only if you consume exciting amounts of it; this will usually occur from supplementation, not from normal diet)
- Forms: riboflavin, riboflavin-5’-phosphate
- Example foods: almonds, mushrooms
B3 (Niacin)
- Function: aids metabolism, supports skin, nerves, and cholesterol levels
- Forms: niacin (nicotinic acid), niacinamide (nicotinamide), inositol hexanicotinate (flush-free niacin)
- Example foods: whole grains, peanuts (literally the best nut for this)
B5 (Pantothenic Acid)
- Function: essential for fatty acid metabolism and hormone production
- Forms: pantothenic acid, calcium pantothenate, panthenol (alcohol form!)
- Example foods: it’s in pretty much everything (hence the name); it’s almost impossible to be deficient in this vitamin unless you are literally starving
B6 (Pyridoxine)
- Function: needed for red blood cell production, supports brain function, as well as specifically being a part of neurotransmitter production (including dopamine and serotonin, despite them being made in different places—the brain and the gut, respectively),
- Forms: pyridoxine hydrochloride, pyridoxal-5’-phosphate (active form)
- Example foods: bananas, potatoes
B7 (Biotin)
- Function: helps with fatty acid synthesis, skin, hair, and nail health
- Forms: d-biotin, biotinylated compounds of various kinds
- Example foods: fava beans, walnuts
B9 (Folate/Folic Acid)
- Function: crucial for DNA synthesis, cell division, and fetal development
- Forms: folic acid, folinic acid, 5-methyltetrahydrofolate (5-MTHF, active form)
- Example foods: chickpeas, spinach ← we only mentioned one leafy green here for fairness, but leafy greens in general are great sources of vitamin B9, hence the name, from the Latin “folium”, meaning leaf.
B12 (Cobalamin)
- Function: supports red blood cell formation, nerve function, and DNA synthesis
- Forms: cyanocobalamin, methylcobalamin (active), hydroxocobalamin (active), adenosylcobalamin (active)
- Example foods: nutritional yeast, nori
You may be wondering: what about vitamins B4, B8, B10, and B11? Those are now vacant spots, that once contained things that are no longer considered vitamins.
Three Critical Vitamin B Mistakes That May Be Sabotaging Your Health
Some mistakes that people make include:
Not supplementing when necessary
This occurs most often after midlife, especially in women, and the most common deficiencies are B1, B9, and B12.
See also: These Signs Often Mean These Nutrient Deficiencies (Do You Have Any?)
While it’s tempting to think “if I have a good balanced diet, I won’t need…” but the fact is sometimes our diet isn’t as nutrient dense as we hope—often through no fault of our own! But many modern farming methods prioritize yield over nutritional value, and that can result in plants and animals that do not have the nutritional qualities they “should”.
We wrote about this a while back, weighing up the “supplementation vs diet alone” dilemma:
Does Our Diet Need A Little Help? ← this also has a very useful chart of which vitamins people usually get too little or too much of. Note however that the statement of marginally excessive folate is slightly misleading, as the data pool contains men and women aged 18–65, while B9 is mostly needed more by women, and especially around childbirth or menopause, so B9 is actually a very common deficiency, but here it’s being balanced out lots of men getting too much (because every multivitamin has it).
Supplementing to excess
Most B vitamins have a very high maximum tolerable dose, because (with the exception of where we marked otherwise) they are water-soluble, which means that if you take more than you need, you’ll just pee it out later. Hence the famous fluorescence, for example.
However, the fat soluble form of vitamin B1 is harder to get in and harder to get out.
As for the others, problems usually only occur if you take enough to cause toxicity, faster than you pee it out. In other words, go easy on those Berocca drinks!
Nevertheless, there are other problems that can arise:
Vitamin B6 is essential—but too much can be toxic. Here’s what to know to stay safe ← tl;dr: there are issues with it causing peripheral neuropathy at doses over 10mg (the safe dose is disputed, so we’re mentioning the lowest safe dose here, but you can read about the others in the article)
Getting forms that don’t work so well
Those different forms we listed? They are not all created equal! For example:
- Folic acid is cheap; unfortunately, it’s not absorbed or used well
- Cyanocobalamin is cheap; unfortunately, it’s not absorbed or used well
Let us quote a recent book review of ours:
❝Rather, the most common forms of vitamins B9 and B12 provided in supplements are folic acid and cyanocobalamin, respectively, which as he demonstrates with extensive research to back up his claims, cannot be easily absorbed or used especially well.
About those vitamers: a vitamer is simply a form of a vitamin—most vitamins we need can arrive in a variety of forms. In the case of vitamins B9 and B12, he advocates for ditching vitamers folic acid and cyanocobalamin, cheap as they are, and springing for bioactive vitamers L-methylfolate, methylcobalamin, and adenosylcobalamin.
He also discusses (again, just as well-evidenced as the above things) why we might struggle to get enough from our diet after a certain age. For example, if trying to get these vitamins from meat, 50% of people over 50 cannot manufacture enough stomach acid to break down that protein to release the vitamins.
And as for methyl-B12 vitamers, you might expect you can get those from meat, and technically you can, but they don’t occur in all animals, just in one kind of animal. Specifically, the kind that has the largest brain-to-body ratio. However, eating the meat of this animal can result in protein folding errors in general and Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease in particular, so the author does not recommend eating humans, however nutritionally convenient that would be.
All this means that supplementation after a certain age really can be a sensible way to do it—but do it wisely, and pick the right vitamers.❞
You can read that review in full here: Your Vitamins are Obsolete: The Vitamer Revolution – by Dr. Sheldon Zablow
Want to try those latter two?
We don’t sell them, but here for your convenience are example products on Amazon:
L-methylfolate (active form of vitamin B9)
Methylcobalamin, adenosylcobalamin, & hydroxocobalamin (active forms of vitamin B12)
Take care!
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