Hazelnuts vs Pecans – 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 hazelnuts to pecans, we picked the hazelnuts.
Why?
In terms of macros, hazelnuts have more protein, carbs, and fiber, though the difference is not big in the latter two cases, and the glycemic indices are resultantly about the same. Meanwhile, pecans have a little more fat, but the fat is healthy in both cases. Everything taken into account, we’re calling it a tie on macros.
When it comes to vitamins, hazelnuts have more of vitamins B3, B5, B6, B7, B9, C, E, K, and choline, while pecans have more of vitamins A, B1, and B2. An easy win for hazelnuts here.
In the category of minerals, hazelnuts have more calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, and potassium, while pecans have more selenium and zinc. Another clear win for hazelnuts.
In short, enjoy either or both (unless you’re allergic, in which case, don’t), but hazelnuts are ultimately the more nutritionally dense of the two.
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
Why You Should Diversify Your Nuts
Take care!
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:
-
Fruit & Veg In The Fridge: Pros & Cons
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
❝What effect does refrigeration have on the nutritional value of fruit and vegetables??❞
It’s difficult to give a single definitive answer, because naturally there are a lot of different fruits and vegetables, and a lot of different climates. The answer may be different for tomatoes in Alaska vs bananas in Arizona!
However, we can still generalize at least somewhat
Refrigeration will generally slow down any degradation process, and in the case of fruit and vegetables, that can mean slowing down their “ripening” too, as applicable.
However…
Refrigeration will also impede helpful bioactivity too, and that includes quite a list of things.
Here’s a good study that’s quite illustrative; we’d summarize the conclusions but the rather long title already does that nicely:
So, this really is a case of “there are pros and cons, but probably more cons on balance”.
In practical terms, a good take-away from this can be twofold:
- don’t keep fruit and veg in the fridge unless the ambient temperature really requires it
- if the ambient temperature does require it, it’s best to get the produce in fresh each day if that’s feasible, to minimize time spent in the fridge
An extra thing not included there: often when it comes to the spoilage of fruit and veg, the problem is that it respires and oxidizes; reducing the temperature does lower the rate of those, but often a far better way is to remove the oxygen. So for example, if you get carried away and chop too many carrot batons for your hummus night, then putting them in a sealed container can go a long way to keeping them fresh.
See also: How Does the Nutritional Value of Fruits and Vegetables Change Over Time?
Enjoy!
Share This Post
-
The Pain-Free Mindset – by Dr. Deepak Ravindran
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.
First: please ignore the terrible title. This is not the medical equivalent of “think and grow rich”. A better title would have been something like “The Pain-Free Plan”.
Attentive subscribers may notice that this author was our featured expert yesterday, so you can learn about his “seven steps” described in our article there, without us repeating that in our review here.
This book’s greatest strength is also potentially its greatest weakness, depending on the reader: it contains a lot of detailed medical information.
This is good or bad depending on whether you like lots of detailed medical information. Dr. Ravindran doesn’t assume prior knowledge, so everything is explained as we go. However, this means that after his well-referenced clinical explanations, high quality medical diagrams, etc, you may come out of this book feeling like you’ve just done a semester at medical school.
Knowledge is power, though, so understanding the underlying processes of pain and pain management really does help the reader become a more informed expert on your own pain—and options for reducing that pain.
Bottom line: this, disguised by its cover as a “think healing thoughts” book, is actually a science-centric, information-dense, well-sourced, comprehensive guide to pain management from one of the leading lights in the field.
Click here to check out The Pain-Free Mindset, and manage yours more comfortably!
Share This Post
-
The Worst Cookware Lurking In Your Kitchen (Toxicologist Explains)
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.
Dr. Yvonne Burkart gives us a rundown of the worst offenders, and what to use instead:
Hot mess
The very worst offender is non-stick cookware, the kind with materials such as Teflon. These are the most toxic, due to PFAS chemicals.
Non-stick pans release toxic gases, leach chemicals into food, and release microplastic particles, which can accumulate in the body.
One that a lot of people don’t think about, in that category, is the humble air-fryer, which often as not has a non-stick cooking “basket”. These she describes as highly toxic, as they combine plastic, non-stick coatings, and high heat, which can release fumes and other potentially dangerous chemicals into the air and food.
You may be wondering: how bad is it? And the answer is, quite bad. PFAS chemicals are linked to infertility, hypertension in pregnancy, developmental issues in children, cancer, weakened immune systems, hormonal disruption, obesity, and intestinal inflammation.
Dr. Burkart’s top picks for doing better:
- Pure ceramic cookware: top choice for safety, particularly brands like Xtrema, which are tested for heavy metal leaching.
- Carbon steel & cast iron: durable and safe; can leach iron in acidic foods (for most people, this is a plus, but some may need to be aware of it)
- Stainless steel: lightweight and affordable but can leach nickel and chromium in acidic foods at high temperatures. Use only if nothing better is available.
And specifically as alternatives to air-fryers: glass convection ovens or stainless steel ovens are safer than conventional air fryers. The old “combination oven” can often be a good choice here.
For more on all of these, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
- PFAS Exposure & Cancer: The Numbers Are High
- It’s Not Fantastic To Be Plastic ← for the closely related topic of microplastics and nanoplastics
Take care!
Share This Post
-
Before You Reach For That Tylenol…
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.
First, on names: we’ve titled this with “Tylenol” because that’s a well-known brand name, but the drug name is paracetamol or acetaminophen:
- paracetamol is the drug name used by the World Health Organization, and thus also most countries.
- acetaminophen is the drug name used in Canada, Colombia, Iran, Japan, US, and Venezuela.
They are absolutely the same drug.
Firstly, obviously, do avoid overdose
The safe dosage described on the packet is generally accurate (usually around 4g/day, spaced out at 1g per 4 hours), and the dose required for toxicity is generally about 10g, or 200mg/kg body weight, whichever is lower. Since a single dose usually contains 2x 500mg = 1g, that makes overdose all too easy.
The amount required for toxicity can be misleading too, because that’s assuming…
- a healthy liver
- no other health problems
- no other medications that interact or add to the toxicity
- no medications that strain the liver (as with many pro-drugs, and drugs in general that are metabolized by the liver, which is lots).
Which is a lot of assumptions! Especially given that the liver can only process so much at once, meaning that if your liver has a lot of things to do, it can get a backlog, and you think “I’m not taking anything with this painkiller that I shouldn’t” but your liver is still metabolizing the last of last night’s glass of wine and one of your regular medications from this morning, because previously it was still metabolizing things from the day before yesterday, and so on.
See also: How To Regenerate Your Liver ← the liver is an incredible organ that does an amazing job, but it can’t do that if you don’t do this
Please don’t overdose deliberately either. Intentional overdoses make up a very large portion of acetaminophen overdoses (exact figures vary from year to year and place to place, but it’s always high), and what a lot of people doing that don’t realize is:
- it’s a very unpleasant way to die. You’ll take it, you might get some initial symptoms within the first hours or you might not, then you’ll probably feel better, and then the next day or so, you’ll enter the organs-shutting-down stage that usually will take most of a week to kill you slowly and painfully. Often your kidneys will go first but it’ll usually be liver necrosis that deals the final blow.
- it’s very difficult to treat. Stomach-pumping might work if you get it within 1 hour of overdose, and activated charcoal might help if you get it within 2 hours. Acetylcysteine may reduce the toxicity if you get it within the 8–48 hour window (depending on the speed of gastric emptying), but whether or not that will help depends on the severity of the overdose and other factors, so this is not something to bet on. After 48 hours, a liver transplant is the last resort, without which, mortality is around 95%.
Unfortunately, this means that a lot of people who do not intend to die horribly, and hoped to either die peacefully or else be saved, die horribly instead.
Ok, that was not a cheerful topic but it is important, before moving on, we’ll just put this here for anyone it may benefit:
How To Stay Alive (When You Really Don’t Want To) ← this is about suicidality, in yourself or others
Secondly, that dosage is for occasional use only
The problem often starts like this:
❝Due to its perceived safety, paracetamol has long been recommended as the first line drug treatment for osteoarthritis by many treatment guidelines, especially in older people who are at higher risk of drug-related complications❞
People with chronic pain, whether high or low on the pain level of that chronic pain, can very easily get into a habit of “I’ll just take this to take the edge off”, for example when getting up in the morning (often a trigger for pain starting) or going to bed at night (one needs to sleep and the pain is a barrier to that).
But… Those events, getting up and going to bed, it means that taking the drug also becomes part of one’s morning/evening routine—with many people even metering the doses out into pill organizers for the week, with this in mind.
A large (n=582,961) study looked at two groups of people, all aged 65+:
- 180,483 people who had been prescribed paracetamol repeatedly (≥2 prescriptions within six months)
- 402,478 people of the same age who had never been prescribed paracetamol repeatedly
The findings? Bearing in mind that “≥2 prescriptions within six months” is not something generally considered excessive…
❝Acetaminophen use was associated with an increased risk of peptic ulcer bleeding (aHR 1.24; 95% CI 1.16, 1.34), uncomplicated peptic-ulcers (aHR 1.20; 95% CI 1.10, 1.31), lower gastrointestinal-bleeding (aHR 1.36; 95% CI 1.29, 1.46), heart-failure (aHR 1.09; 95% CI 1.06, 1.13), hypertension (aHR 1.07; 95% CI 1.04, 1.11), and chronic kidney disease (aHR 1.19; 95% CI 1.13, 1.24).❞
The researchers concluded:
❝Despite its perceived safety, acetaminophen is associated with several serious complications. Given its minimal analgesic effectiveness, the use of acetaminophen as the first-line oral analgesic for long-term conditions in older people requires careful reconsideration.❞
You can see the study itself here: Incidence of side effects associated with acetaminophen in people aged 65 years or more: a prospective cohort study using data from the Clinical Practice Research Datalink
What to use instead?
It’s been established that taking aspirin regularly isn’t great either:
See: Low-Dose Aspirin & Anemia and Aspirin, CVD Risk, & Potential Counter-Risks
And as for ibuprofen, we don’t have an article about that yet, but it’s gut-unhealthy (harms your microbiome), and besides, anything it can do, ginger can do as well or better (in head-to-head trials; we’re not speaking hyperbolically here):
Ginger Does A Lot More Than You Think ← in fact, it was even found as effective as the combination of acetaminophen, ibuprofen, and caffeine
There are other options though, and as pain is complicated and there’s no one-size-fits-all solution, we’ve compiled the following:
- Dial Down Your Pain
- Stop Pain Spreading
- Managing Chronic Pain (Realistically!)
- The 7 Approaches To Pain Management
- Science-Based Alternative Pain Relief ← when painkillers aren’t helping, these things might
Take care!
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:
-
The 6 Dimensions Of Sleep (And Why They Matter)
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 Good Is Your Sleep, Really?
This is Dr. Marie-Pierre St-Onge, Director of Columbia University’s Center of Excellence for Sleep and Circadian Research.
The focus of Dr. St-Onge’s research is the study of the impact of lifestyle, especially sleep and diet, on cardio-metabolic risk factors.
She conducts clinical research combining her expertise on sleep, nutrition, and energy regulation.
What kind of things do her studies look at?
Her work focuses on questions about…
- The role of circadian rhythms (including sleep duration and timing)
- Meal timing and eating patterns
…and their impact on cardio-metabolic risk.
What does she want us to know?
First things first, when not to worry:
❝Getting a bad night’s sleep once in a while isn’t anything to worry about. That’s what we would describe as transient insomnia. Chronic insomnia occurs when you spend three months or more without regular sleep, and that is when I would start to be concerned.❞
But… as prevention is (as ever) better than cure, she also advises that we do pay attention to our sleep! And, as for how to do that…
The Six Dimensions of Sleep
One useful definition of overall sleep health is the RU-Sated framework, which assesses six key dimensions of sleep that have been consistently associated with better health outcomes. These are:
- regularity
- satisfaction with sleep
- alertness during waking hours
- timing of sleep
- efficiency of sleep
- duration of sleep
You’ll notice that some of these things you can only really know if you use a sleep-monitoring app. She does recommend the use of those, and so do we!
We reviewed and compared some of the most popular sleep-monitoring apps! You can check them out here: Time For Some Pillow Talk
You also might like…
We’re not all the same with regard to when is the best time for us to sleep, so:
Use This Sleep Cycle Calculator To Figure Out the Optimal Time for You To Go to Bed and Wake Up
AROUND THE WEB
What’s happening in the health world…
- Aspirin may make your breathing worse
- Taking naps for more than 30 minutes may raise your metabolic disease risk
- How to ease back into exercise after surgery
- Study provides evidence that breathing exercises may reduce your Alzheimer’s risk
- No one in movies knows how to swallow a pill
More to come tomorrow!
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:
-
The Seven-Day Sleep Prescription – by Dr. Aric Prather
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.
You probably already know about sleep hygiene. So, what does this book have to offer?
Dr. Aric Prather offers seven days’ worth of adjustments, practices to take up, from when you get up in the morning to when you lay your head down at night.
Some you’ll surely be familiar with, like avoiding blue light and social media at night.
Others, you might not be familiar with, like scheduling 15 minutes for worrying in the daytime. The rationale for this one is that when you find yourself inclined to worry at a time that will keep you awake, you’ll know that you can put off such thoughts to your scheduled “worrying time”. That they’ll be addressed then, and that you can thus sleep soundly meanwhile.
Where the book really comes into its own is in such things as discussing how to not just manage sleep debt, but how to actually use it in your favour.
Nor does Dr. Prather shy away from the truths of our world… That the world these days is not built for us to sleep well. That there are so many other priorities; to get our work done, to succeed and achieve, to pay bills, to support our kids and partners. That so many of these things make plenty of sense in the moment, but catch up with us eventually.
Bottom line: what this book aims to give is a genuinely sustainable approach to sleeping—controlling what we can, and working with what we can’t. If you’d like to have a better relationship with sleep, this book is an excellent choice.
Click here to check out the Seven-Day Sleep Prescription, and improve yours!
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:
