Gut Health and Anxiety

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It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!

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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

❝I’d like to read articles on gut health and anxiety❞

We hope you caught yesterday’s edition of 10almonds, which touched on both of those! Other past editions you might like include:

We’ll be sure to include more going forward, too!

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Recommended

  • Reduce Caffeine’s Impact on Kidneys
  • The Whole-Body Approach to Osteoporosis – by Keith McCormick
    Explore beyond calcium and vitamin D—this guide delves into the full spectrum of osteoporosis management, from medications to home health checks, all vetted by health experts.

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  • Beat Sugar Addiction Now! – by Dr. Jacob Teitelbaum & Chrystle Fiedler

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    Sugar isn’t often thought of as an addiction in the same category as alcohol or nicotine, but it’s actually very similar in some ways…

    A bold claim, but: in each case, it has to do with dopamine responses to something that has:

    • an adverse effect on our health,
    • a quickly developed tolerance to same,
    • and unpleasant withdrawal symptoms when quitting.

    However, not all sugar addictions are created equal, and Dr. Teitelbaum lays four different types of sugar addiction out for us:

    1. Most related to “I need to perform and I need to perform now”
    2. Most related to “I just need something to get me through one more stressful day, again, just like every day before it”
    3. Most related to “ate too much sugar because of the above, and now a gut overgrowth of C. albicans is at the wheel”
    4. Most related to “ate too much sugar because of the above, and now insulin resistance is a problem that perpetuates itself too”

    Of course, these may overlap, and indeed, they tend to stack cumulatively as time goes by.

    However, Dr. Teitelbaum notes that as readers we may recognize ourselves as being at a particular point in the above, and there are different advices for each of them.

    You thought it was just going to be about going cold turkey? Nope!

    Instead, a multi-vector approach is recommended, including adjustments to sleep, nutrition, immune health, hormonal health, and more.

    In short: if you’ve been trying to to kick the “White Death” habit as Gloria Swanson called it (sugar, that is, not the WW2 Finnish sniper of the same name—we can’t help you with that one), then this book is really much more helpful than others that take the “well, just don’t eat it, then” approach!

    Pick up your copy of Beat Sugar Addiction Now from Amazon, and start your journey!

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  • Kiwi vs Passion Fruit – Which is Healthier?

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    Our Verdict

    When comparing kiwi to passion fruit, we picked the passion fruit.

    Why?

    This fruit is so passionate about delivery nutrient-dense goodness, that at time of writing, nothing has beaten it yet!

    In terms of macros, passion fruit has a little more protein, as well as 50% more carbs, and/but more than 3x the fiber. That last stat is particularly impressive, and also results in passion fruit having a much lower glycemic index, too. In short, a clear win for passion fruit in the macros category.

    In the category of vitamins, kiwi has more of vitamins B9, C, E, and K, while passion fruit has more of vitamins A, B2, B3, and B6, making for a tie this time.

    As for minerals, kiwi has more calcium, copper, manganese, and zinc, while passion fruit has more iron, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, and selenium, resulting in a modest, marginal win for passion fruit in this category.

    Adding up the categories gives a convincing win for passion fruit, but by all means enjoy either or both; diversity is good! And kiwi has its merits too (for example, it’s particularly high in vitamin K, appropriately enough).

    Want to learn more?

    You might like to read:

    Top 8 Fruits That Prevent & Kill Cancer

    Enjoy!

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  • Beyond Supplements: The Real Immune-Boosters!

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    The Real Immune-Boosters

    What comes to your mind when we say “immune support”? Vitamin C and maybe zinc? Those have their place, but there are things we can do that are a lot more important!

    It’s just, these things are not talked about as much, because stores can’t sell them to you

    Sleep

    One of the biggest difference-makers. Get good sleep! Getting at least 7 hours decent sleep (not lying in bed, not counting interruptions to sleep as part of the sleep duration) can improve your immune system by three or four times.

    Put another way, people are 3–4 times more likely to get sick if they get less sleep than that on average.

    Check it out: Behaviorally Assessed Sleep and Susceptibility to the Common Cold

    Eat an anti-inflammatory diet

    In short, for most of us this means lots of whole plant foods (lots of fiber), and limited sugar, flour, alcohol.

    For more details, you can see our main feature on this: Keep Inflammation At Bay!

    You may wonder why eating to reduce inflammation (inflammation is a form of immune response) will help improve immune response. Put it this way:

    If your town’s fire service is called out eleventy-two times per day to deal with things that are not, in fact, fires, then when there is a fire, they will be already exhausted, and will not do their job so well.

    Look after your gut microbiota

    Additionally, healthy gut microbiota (fostered by the same diet we just described) help keep your body pathogen-free, by avoiding “leaky gut syndrome” that occurs when, for example, C. albicans (you do not want this in your gut, and it thrives on the things we just told you to avoid) puts its roots through your intestinal walls, making holes in them. And through those holes? You definitely do not want bacteria from your intestines going into the rest of your body.

    See also: Gut Health 101

    Actually get that moderate exercise

    There’s definitely a sweet-spot here, because too much exercise will also exhaust you and deplete your body’s resources. However, the famous “150 minutes per week” (so, a little over 20 minutes per day, or 25 minutes per day with one day off) will make a big difference.

    See: Exercise and the Regulation of Immune Functions

    Manage your stress levels (good and bad!)

    This one swings both ways:

    • Acute stress (like a cold shower) is good for immune response. Think of it like a fire drill for your body.
    • Chronic stress (“the general everything” persistently stressful in life) is bad for immune response. This is the fire drill that never ends. Your body’s going to know what to do really well, but it’s going to be exhausted already by the time an actual threat hits.

    Read more: Effects of Stress on Immune Function: the Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful

    Supplement, yes.

    These are far less critical than the above things, but are also helpful. Good things to take include:

    Enjoy, and stay well!

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Related Posts

  • Reduce Caffeine’s Impact on Kidneys
  • Walk Like You’re 20 Years Younger Again

    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.

    How fit, healthy, strong, and mobile were you 20 years ago? For most people, the answer is “better than now”. Physiotherapist Dr. Doug Weiss has advice on turning back the clock:

    The exercises

    If you already have no problems walking, this one is probably not for you. However, if you’re not so able to comfortably walk as you used to be, then Dr. Weiss recommends:

    • Pillow squat: putting pillow on a chair, crossing hands on chest, standing up and sitting down. Similar to the very important “getting up off the floor without using your hands” exercise, but easier.
    • Wall leaning: standing against a wall with heels 4″ away from it, crossing arms over chest again, and pulling the body off the wall using the muscles in the front of the shin. Note, this means not cheating by using other muscles, leveraging the upper body, pushing off with the buttocks, or anything else like that.
    • Stepping forward: well, this certainly is making good on the promise of walking like we did 20 years ago; there sure was a lot of stepping forward involved. More seriously, this is actually about stepping over some object, first with support, and then without.
    • Heel raise: is what it sounds like, raising up on toes and back down again; first with support, then without.
    • Side stepping: step sideways 2–3 steps in each direction. First with support, then without. Bonus: if your support is your partner, then congratulations, you are now dancing bachata.

    For more details (and visual demonstration) of these exercises and more, enjoy:

    Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!

    Want to learn more?

    You might also like:

    4 Tips To Stand Without Using Hands

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  • Dr. Greger’s Anti-Aging Eight

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    Dr. Greger’s Anti-Aging Eight

    This is Dr. Michael Greger. We’ve featured him before: Brain Food? The Eyes Have It!

    This time, we’re working from his latest book, the excellent “How Not To Age”, which we reviewed all so recently. It is very information-dense, but we’re going to be focussing on one part, his “anti-aging eight”, that is to say, eight interventions he rates the most highly to slow aging in general (other parts of the book pertained to slowing eleven specific pathways of aging, or preserving specific bodily functions against aging, for example).

    Without further ado, his “anti-aging eight” are…

    1. Nuts
    2. Greens
    3. Berries
    4. Xenohormesis & microRNA manipulation
    5. Prebiotics & postbiotics
    6. Caloric restriction / IF
    7. Protein restriction
    8. NAD+

    As you may have noticed, some of these are things might appear already on your grocery shopping list; others don’t seem so “household”. Let’s break them down:

    Nuts, greens, berries

    These are amongst the most nutrient-dense and phytochemical-useful parts of the diet that Dr. Greger advocates for in his already-famous “Dr. Greger’s Daily Dozen”.

    For brevity, we’ll not go into the science of these here, but will advise you: eat a daily portion of nuts, a daily portion of berries, and a couple of daily portions of greens.

    Xenohormesis & microRNA manipulation

    You might, actually, have these on your grocery shopping list too!

    Hormesis, you may recall from previous editions of 10almonds, is about engaging in a small amount of eustress to trigger the body’s self-strengthening response, for example:

    Xenohormesis is about getting similar benefits, second-hand.

    For example, plants that have been grown to “organic” standards (i.e. without artificial pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers) have had to adapt to their relatively harsher environment by upping their levels of protective polyphenols and other phytochemicals that, as it turns out, are as beneficial to us as they are to the plants:

    Hormetic Effects of Phytochemicals on Health and Longevity

    Additionally, the flip side of xenohormesis is that some plant compounds can themselves act as a source of hormetic stress that end up bolstering us. For example:

    Redox-linked effects of green tea on DNA damage and repair, and influence of microsatellite polymorphism in HMOX-1: results of a human intervention trial

    In essence, it’s not just that it has anti-oxidant effect; it also provides a tiny oxidative-stress immunization against serious sources of oxidative stress—and thus, aging.

    MicroRNA manipulation is, alas, too complex to truly summarize an entire chapter in a line or two, but it has to do with genetic information from the food that we eat having a beneficial or deleterious effect to our own health:

    Diet-derived microRNAs: unicorn or silver bullet?

    A couple of quick takeaways (out of very many) from Dr. Greger’s chapter on this is to spring for the better quality olive oil, and skip the cow’s milk:

    Prebiotics & Postbiotics

    We’re short on space, so we’ll link you to a previous article, and tell you that it’s important against aging too:

    Making Friends With Your Gut (You Can Thank Us Later)

    An example of how one of Dr. Greger’s most-recommended postbiotics helps against aging, by the way:

    (Urolithin can be found in many plants, and especially those containing tannins)

    See also: How to Make Urolithin Postbiotics from Tannins

    Caloric restriction / Intermittent fasting

    This is about lowering metabolic load and promoting cellular apoptosis (programmed cell death; sounds bad; is good) and autophagy (self-consumption; again, sounds bad; is good).

    For example, he cites the intermittent fasters’ 46% lower risk of dying in the subsequent years of follow-up in this longitudinal study:

    Association of periodic fasting lifestyles with survival and incident major adverse cardiovascular events in patients undergoing cardiac catheterization

    For brevity we’ll link to our previous IF article, but we’ll revisit caloric restriction in a main feature on of these days:

    Fasting Without Crashing? We sort the science from the hype!

    Dr. Greger favours caloric restriction over intermittent fasting, arguing that it is easier to adhere to and harder to get wrong if one has some confounding factor (e.g. diabetes, or a medication that requires food at certain times, etc). If adhered to healthily, the benefits appear to be comparable for each, though.

    Protein restriction

    In contrast to our recent main feature Protein vs Sarcopenia, in which that week’s featured expert argued for high protein consumption levels, protein restriction can, on the other hand, have anti-aging effects. A reminder that our body is a complex organism, and sometimes what’s good for one thing is bad for another!

    Dr. Greger offers protein restriction as a way to get many of the benefits of caloric restriction, without caloric restriction. He further notes that caloric restriction without protein restriction doesn’t decrease IGF-1 levels (a marker of aging).

    However, for FGF21 levels (these are good and we want them higher to stay younger), what matters more than lowering proteins in general is lowering levels of the amino acid methionine—found mostly in animal products, not plants—so the source of the protein matters:

    Regulation of longevity and oxidative stress by nutritional interventions: role of methionine restriction

    For example, legumes deliver only 5–10% of the methionine that meat does, for the same amount of protein, so that’s a factor to bear in mind.

    NAD+

    This is about nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, or NAD+ to its friends.

    NAD+ levels decline with age, and that decline is a causal factor in aging, and boosting the levels can slow aging:

    Therapeutic Potential of NAD-Boosting Molecules: The In Vivo Evidence

    Can we get NAD+ from food? We can, but not in useful quantities or with sufficient bioavailability.

    Supplements, then? Dr. Greger finds the evidence for their usefulness lacking, in interventional trials.

    How to boost NAD+, then? Dr. Greger prescribes…

    Exercise! It boosts levels by 127% (i.e., it more than doubles the levels), based on a modest three-week exercise bike regimen:

    Skeletal muscle NAMPT is induced by exercise in humans

    Another study on resistance training found the same 127% boost:

    Resistance training increases muscle NAD+ and NADH concentrations as well as NAMPT protein levels and global sirtuin activity in middle-aged, overweight, untrained individuals

    Take care!

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  • Hearty Healthy Ragù

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    Ragù is a traditional Italian meaty sauce with tomato, and is the base for a number of other Italian dishes. It can be enjoyed as-is, or with very minor modifications can be turned into a Bolognese sauce or a lasagna filling or various other things. Our variations from tradition are mainly twofold here: we’re using nutrition-packed lentils instead of meat (but with a couple of twists that make them meatier), and we’re not using wine.

    Traditionally, red wine is used in a ragù (white wine if you want to make it into a Bolognese sauce, by the way), but with all we’re doing it’s not necessary. If you want to add a splash of wine, we’re not going to call that a healthy ingredient, but we’re also not the boss of you

    You will need

    • 1 large onion (or equivalent small ones), chopped roughly
    • 1 bulb garlic (or to your heart’s content), chopped finely or crushed
    • 4 large tomatoes, chopped (or 2 cans chopped tomatoes)
    • 1 tube (usually about 7 oz) tomato purée
    • 1 cup brown lentils (green lentils will do if you can’t get brown)
    • 1 tbsp chia seeds
    • 1 tbsp black pepper, cracked or coarse ground
    • 1 bunch fresh basil, finely chopped (or 1 tbsp, freeze-dried)
    • 1 bunch fresh oregano, finely chopped (or 1 tbsp, freeze-dried)
    • 1 tbsp nutritional yeast (failing that, 1 tbsp yeast extract, yes, even if you don’t like it, we promise it won’t taste like it once it’s done; it just makes the dish meatier in taste and also adds vitamin B12)
    • 1 tsp cumin, ground (note that this one was tsp, not tbsp like the others)
    • 1 tsp MSG, or 2 tsp low-sodium salt
    • 4 cups water
    • Olive oil for frying (ideally Extra Virgin, but so long as it’s at least marked virgin olive oil and not cut with other oils, that’s fine)
    • Parsley, chopped, to garnish

    Method

    (we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)

    1) Put the lentils in a small saucepan, or if you have one, a rice cooker (the rice cooker is better; works better and requires less attention), adding the chia seeds, MSG or low sodium salt, and nutritional yeast (or yeast extract). as well as the cumin. Add 4 cups boiling water and turn on the heat to cook them. This will probably take about 15–20 minutes; you want the lentils to be soft; a tiny bit past al dente, but not so far as mushy.

    2) Fry the onion in some olive oil in a big pan (everything is going in here eventually if the pan is big enough; if it isn’t, you’ll need to transfer to a bigger pan in a bit). Once they’re nearly done, throw in the garlic too. If the lentils aren’t done yet, take the onions and garlic off the heat while you wait. After a few times of doing this recipe, you’ll be doing everything like clockwork and it’ll all align perfectly.

    3) Drain the lentils (if all the water wasn’t absorbed; again, after doing it a few times, you’ll just use the right amount of water for your apparatus) but don’t rinse them (remember you put seasonings in here!), and add them to the pan with the onions and garlic; add a splash more olive oil if necessary, and stir until all the would-be-excess fat is absorbed into the lentils.

    Note: the excess fat to be absorbed by the lentils was a feature not a bug; we wanted a little fat in the lentils! Makes the dish meatier and tastier, as well as more nutrient-dense.

    4) add the tomatoes and tomato purée, stirring them in thoroughly; add the basil and oregano too and stir those in as well. Set it on a low heat for at least 10–15 minutes, stirring occasionally to let the flavors blend.

    (if you happen to be serving pasta with it, then the time it takes to boil water and cook the pasta is a good time for the flavors to do their thing)

    5) take it off the heat, and add the parsley garnish. It’s done!

    Enjoy!

    Want to learn more?

    For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:

    Take care!

    Don’t Forget…

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