Healthy Choco-Banoffee Ice Cream
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Chocolate, banana, and coffee—quite a threesome, whether for breakfast or dessert, and this is healthy enough for breakfast while being decadent enough for dessert! With no dairy or added sugar, and lots of antioxidants, this is a healthy way to start or end your day.
You will need
- 3 bananas
- 2 tbsp cocoa powder, no additives
- 2 shots espresso, chilled
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- On standby: milk of your choice—we recommend almond or hazelnut
Method
(we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)
1) Peel, slice, and freeze the bananas (let them freeze for at least 2–3 hours)
2) Blend the ingredients, except the milk. Add milk as necessary if the mixture is too thick to blend. Be careful not to add too much at once though, or it will become less of an ice cream and more of a milkshake!
3) Scoop into a sundae glass to serve:
Enjoy!
Want to learn more?
For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:
- Which Plant Milk?
- The Bitter Truth About Coffee (or is it?)
- Cacao vs Carob – Which is Healthier?
- Apples vs Bananas – Which is Healthier?
- Which Sugars Are Healthier, And Which Are Just The Same?
- Tasty Polyphenols
Take care!
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From Painkillers To Hunger-Killers
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.
Here’s this week’s selection of health news discoveries, the science behind them, what they mean for you, and where you can go from there:
Killing more than pain
It’s well-known that overuse of opioids can lead to many problems, and here’s another one: messing with the endocrine system. This time, mostly well-evidenced in men—however, the researchers are keen to point out that absence of evidence is very much not evidence of absence, hence “the hidden effects” in the headline below. It’s not that the effects are hard to see—it’s that a lot of the research has yet to be done. For now, though, we know at the very least that there’s an association between opioid use and hyperprolactinemia in men. The same research also begins to shine a light on the effects of opioid use on the hypothalamic-pituitary system and bone health, too:
Read in full: The hidden effects of opioid use on the endocrine system
Related: The 7 Approaches To Pain Management
Gut microbiome dysbiosis may lead to slipping disks
These things sound quite unconnected, but the association is strong. The likely mechanism of action is that the gut dysbiosis influences systemic inflammation, and thus spinal health—because the gut-spine axis cannot really be disconnected (while you’re alive, at least). It’s especially likely if you’re over 50 and female:
Read in full: Are back problems influenced by your gut?
Related: Is Your Gut Leading You Into Osteoporosis?
The Internet is really really great (for brains)
It’s common to see many articles on the Internet telling us, paradoxically, that we should spend less time on the Internet. However… Remember when in the 90s, it was all about “the information superhighway”? It turns out, the fact that it’s more like “the information spaghetti junction” these days doesn’t change the fact that stimulation is good for our brains, and daily Internet use improves memory, because of the different way that we index and store information that came from a virtual source. While there are parts of your brain for “things at home” and “things at the local supermarket”, there are also parts for “things at 10almonds” and “things at Facebook” and so forth. You are, in effect, building a vast mental library as you surf:
Read in full: Daily internet use supercharges your memory!
Related: Make Social Media Work For Your Mental Health
Fall back
Around this time of year in many places in the Northern Hemisphere, the clocks go back an hour (it’s next weekend in the US and Canada, by the way, and this weekend in most of Europe). Many enjoy this as the potential for an extra hour’s sleep, but for night owls, it can be more of a nuisance than a benefit—throwing out what’s often an already difficult relationship with the clock, and presenting challenges both practical and physiological (different processing of melatonin, for instance). Here be science:
Read in full: Why night owls struggle more when the clocks go back
Related: Early Bird Or Night Owl? Genes vs Environment
Can you outrun your hunger?
It seems so, though benefits are strongest in women. We say “outrun”, though this study did use stationary cycling. To put it in few words, intense exercise (but not moderate exercise) significantly reduced acylated ghrelin (hunger hormone) levels, and subjective reports of hunger, especially in women:
Read in full: Study finds intense exercise may suppress appetite in healthy humans
Related: 3 Appetite Suppressants Better Than Ozempic
Take care!
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Colloidal Gold’s Impressive Claims
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All That Glitters…
Today we’ll be examining colloidal gold supplementation.
This issue of 10almonds brought to you by the writer suddenly getting lots of advertisements for this supplement. It’s not a new thing though, and has been around in one form or another since pretty much forever.
Colloidal gold is…
- Gold, as in the yellow metal
- Colloidal, as in “very tiny insoluble particles dispersed though another substance (such as water)”
What are the claims made for it?
Honestly, just about everything is claimed for it. But to go with some popular claims:
- Reduces inflammation
- Supports skin health
- Boosts immune function
- Combats aging
- Improves cognitive function
So, what does the science say?
Does it do those things?
The short and oversimplified answer is: no
However, there is a little bit of tangential merit, so we’re going to talk about the science of it, and how the leap gets made between what the science says and what the advertisements say.
First… What makes gold so special, in general? Historically, three things:
- It’s quite rare
- It’s quite shiny
- It’s quite unreactive
- The first is about supply and demand, so that’s not very important to us in this article.
- The second is an aesthetic quality, which actually will have a little bit of relevance, but not much.
- The third has been important historically (because it meant that shiny gold stayed shiny, because it didn’t tarnish), and now also important industrially too, as gold can be used in many processes where we basically need for nothing to happen (i.e., a very inert component is needed)
That third quality—its unreactivity—has become important in medicine.
When scientists need a way to deliver something (without the delivering object getting eaten by the body’s “eat everything” tendencies), or otherwise not interact chemically with anything around, gold is an excellent choice.
Hence gold teeth, and gold fillings, by the way. They’re not just for the bling factor; they were developed because of their unreactivity and thus safety.
So, what about those health claims we mentioned above?
Here be science (creative interpretations not included)
The most-backed-by-science claim from that list is “reduces inflammation”.
Websites selling colloidal gold cite studies such as:
Gold nanoparticles reduce inflammation in cerebral microvessels of mice with sepsis
A promising title!The results of the study showed:
❝20 nm cit-AuNP treatment reduced leukocyte and platelet adhesion to cerebral blood vessels, prevented BBB failure, reduced TNF- concentration in brain, and ICAM-1 expression both in circulating polymorphonuclear (PMN) leukocytes and cerebral blood vessels of mice with sepsis. Furthermore, 20 nm cit-AuNP did not interfere with the antibiotic effect on the survival rate of mice with sepsis.❞
That “20 nm cit-AuNP” means “20 nm citrate-covered gold nanoparticles”
So it is not so much the antioxidant powers of gold being tested here, as the antioxidant powers of citrate, a known antioxidant. The gold was the carrying agent, whose mass and unreactivity allowed it to get where it needed to be.
The paper does say the words “Gold nanoparticles have been demonstrated to own important anti-inflammatory properties“ in the abstract, but does not elaborate on that, reference it, or indicate how.
Websites selling colloidal gold also cite papers such as:
Anti-inflammatory effect of gold nanoparticles supported on metal oxides
Another promising title! However the abstract mentions:
❝The effect was dependent on the MOx NPs chemical nature
[…]
The effect of Au/TiO2 NPs was not related to Au NPs size❞
MOx NPs = mineral oxide nanoparticles. In this case, the gold was a little more than a carrying agent, though, because the gold is described and explained as being a catalytic agent (i.e., its presence helps the attached mineral oxides react more quickly).
We said that was the most-backed claim, and as you can see, it has some basis but is rather tenuous since the gold by itself won’t do anything; it just helps the mineral oxides.
Next best-backed claim builds from that, which is “supports skin health”.
Sometimes colloidal gold is sold as a facial tonic. By itself it’ll distribute (inert) gold nanoparticles across your skin, and may “give you a healthy glow”, because that’s what happens when you put shiny wet stuff on your face.
Healthwise, if the facial tonic also contains some of the minerals we mentioned above, then it may have an antioxidant effect. But again, no minerals, no effect.
The claim that it “combats aging” is really a tag-on to the “antioxidant” claim.
As for the “supports immune health” claim… Websites selling colloid gold cite studies such as:
To keep things brief: gold can fight infectious diseases in much the same way that forks can fight hunger. It’s an inert carrying agent.
As for “improves cognitive function”? The only paper we could find cited was that mouse sepsis study again, this time with the website saying “researchers found that rats treated with colloidal gold showed improved spatial memory and learning ability“ whereas the paper cited absolutely did not claim that, not remotely, not even anything close to that. It wasn’t even rats, it was mice, and they did not test their memory or learning.
Is it safe?
Colloidal gold supplementation is considered very safe, precisely because gold is one of the least chemically reactive substances you could possibly consume. It is special precisely because it so rarely does anything.
However, impurities could be introduced in the production process, and the production process often involves incredibly harsh reagents to get the gold ions, and if any of those reagents are left in the solution, well, gold is safe but sodium borohydride and chloroauric acid aren’t!
Where can I get some?
In the unlikely event that our research review has given you an urge to try it, here’s an example product on Amazon
Take care!
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How To Avoid Age-Related Macular Degeneration
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Avoiding Age-Related Macular Degeneration
Eye problems can strike at any age, but as we get older, it becomes a lot more likely. In particular, age-related macular degeneration is, as the name suggests, an age-bound disease.
Is there no escaping it, then?
The risk factors for age-related macular degeneration are as follows:
- Being over the age of 55 (can’t do much about this one)
- Being over the age of 65 (risk climbs sharply now)
- Having a genetic predisposition (can’t do much about this one)
- Having high cholesterol (this one we can tackle)
- Having cardiovascular disease (this one we can tackle)
- Smoking (so, just don’t)
Genes predispose; they don’t predetermine. Or to put it another way: genes load the gun, but lifestyle pulls the trigger.
Preventative interventions against age-related macular degeneration
Prevention is better than a cure in general, and this especially goes for things like age-related macular degeneration, because the most common form of it has no known cure.
So first, look after your heart (because your heart feeds your eyes).
See also: The Mediterranean Diet
Next, eat to feed your eyes specifically. There’s a lot of research to show that lutein helps avoid age-related diseases in the eyes and the rest of the brain, too:
See also: Brain Food? The Eyes Have It
Do supplements help?
They can! There was a multiple-part landmark study by the National Eye Institute, a formula was developed that reduced the 5-year risk of intermediate disease progressing to late disease by 25–30%. It also reduced the risk of vision loss by 19%.
You can read about both parts of the study here:
Age-Related Eye Disease Studies (AREDS/AREDS2): major findings
As you can see, an improvement was made between the initial study and the second one, by replacing beta-carotene with lutein and zeaxanthin.
The AREDS2 formula contains:
- 500 mg vitamin C
- 180 mg vitamin E
- 80 mg zinc
- 10 mg lutein
- 2 mg copper
You can learn more about these supplements, and where to get them, here on the NEI’s corner of the official NIH website:
AREDS 2 Supplements for Age-Related Macular Degeneration
Take care of yourself!
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The Plant Power Doctor
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A Prescription For GLOVES
This is Dr. Gemma Newman. She’s a GP (General Practitioner, British equivalent to what is called a family doctor in America), and she realized that she was treating a lot of patients while nobody was actually getting better.
So, she set out to help people actually get better… But how?
The biggest thing
The single biggest thing she recommends is a whole foods plant-based diet, as that’s a starting point for a lot of other things.
Click here for an assortment of short videos by her and other health professionals on this topic!
Specifically, she advocates to “love foods that love you back”, and make critical choices when deciding between ingredients.
Click here to see her recipes and tips (this writer is going to try out some of these!)
What’s this about GLOVES?
We recently reviewed her book “Get Well, Stay Well: The Six Healing Health Habits You Need To Know”, and now we’re going to talk about those six things in more words than we had room for previously.
They are six things that she says we should all try to get every day. It’s a lot simpler than a lot of checklists, and very worthwhile:
Gratitude
May seem like a wishy-washy one to start with, but there’s a lot of evidence for this making a big difference to health, largely on account of how it lowers stress and anxiety. See also:
How To Get Your Brain On A More Positive Track (Without Toxic Positivity)
Love
This is about social connections, mostly. We are evolved to be a social species, and while some of us want/need more or less social interaction than others, generally speaking we thrive best in a community, with all the social support that comes with that. See also:
How To Beat Loneliness & Isolation
Outside
This is about fresh air and it’s about moving and it’s about seeing some green plants (and if available, blue sky), marvelling at the wonder of nature and benefiting in many ways. See also:
Vegetables
We spoke earlier about the whole foods plant-based diet for which she advocates, so this is that. While reducing/skipping meat etc is absolutely a thing, the focus here is on diversity of vegetables; it is best to make a game of seeing how many different ones you can include in a week (not just the same three!). See also:
Three Critical Kitchen Prescriptions
Exercise
At least 150 minutes moderate exercise per week, and some kind of resistance work. It can be calisthenics or something; it doesn’t have to be lifting weights if that’s not your thing! See also:
Resistance Is Useful! (Especially As We Get Older)
Sleep
Quality and quantity. Yes, 7–9 hours, yes, regardless of age. Unless you’re a child or a bodybuilder, in which case make it nearer 12. But for most of us, 7–9. See also:
Why You Probably Need More Sleep
Want to know more?
As well as the book we mentioned earlier, you might also like:
The Plant Power Doctor – by Dr. Gemma Newman
While the other book we mentioned is available for pre-order for Americans (it’s already released for the rest of the world), this one is available to all right now, so that’s a bonus too.
If books aren’t your thing (or even if they are), you might like her award-winning podcast:
Take care!
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A Supplement To Rival St. John’s Wort Against Depression
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Do You Feel The SAMe?
S-Adeonsyl-L-Methionone (SAMe) is a chemical found naturally in the body, and/but enjoyed widely as a supplement. The main reasons people take it are:
- Improve mood (antidepressant effect)
- Improve joints (reduce osteoarthritis symptoms)
- Improve liver (detoxifying effect)
Let’s see what the science says for each of those claims…
Does it improve mood?
It seems to perform comparably to St. John’s Wort (which is good; it performs comparably to Prozac).
Best of all, it does this with fewer contraindications (St. John’s Wort has so many contraindications).
Here’s how they stack up:
This looks very promising, though it’d be nice to see a larger body of research, to be sure.
Does it reduce osteoarthritis symptoms?
The good news: it performs comparably to ibuprofen, with fewer side effects!
The bad news: it also performs comparably to placebo!
Read into that what you will about ibuprofen’s usefulness vs OA symptoms.
Read all about it:
S-Adenosylmethionine for osteoarthritis of the knee or hip
If you were hoping for something for OA or similar symptoms, you might like our previous main features:
- Avoiding/Managing Osteoarthritis
- Managing Chronic Pain (Realistically!)
- The 7 Approaches To Pain Management
- (Science-Based) Alternative Pain Relief
Does it help against liver disease?
According to adverts for SAMe: absolutely!
According to science: we don’t know
The science for this is so weak that it’d be unworthy of mention if it weren’t for the fact that SAMe is so widely sold as good against hepatotoxicity.
To be clear: maybe it really is great! Science hasn’t yet disproved its usefulness either.
It is popularly assumed to be beneficial due to there being an association between lower levels of SAMe in the body (remember, it is also produced inside our bodies) and development of liver disease, especially cholestasis.
Here’s an example of what pretty much every study we found was like (inconclusive research based mostly on mice):
S-adenosylmethionine in liver health, injury, and cancer
For other options for liver health, consider:
Is it safe?
Safety trials have been done ranging from 3 months to 2 years, with no serious side effects coming to light. So, it appears quite safe.
That said, as with anything, there are contraindications, such as:
- if you have bipolar disorder, skip this unless directed by your health care provider, because it may worsen the symptoms of mania
- if you are on SSRIs or other serotonergic drugs, it may interact with those
- if you are immunocompromised, you might want to skip it can increase the risk of P. carinii growth in such cases
As always, do speak with your doctor/pharmacist for personalized advice.
Summary
SAMe’s evidence-based qualities seem to stack up as follows:
- Against depression: good
- Against osteoarthritis: weak
- Against liver disease: unknown
As for safety, it has been found quite safe for most people.
Where can I get it?
We don’t sell it, but here is an example product on Amazon, for your convenience
Enjoy!
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Stop Pain Spreading
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Put Your Back Into It (Or Don’t)!
We’ve written before about Managing Chronic Pain (Realistically!), and today we’re going to tackle a particular aspect of chronic pain management.
- It’s a thing where the advice is going to be “don’t do this”
- And if you have chronic pain, you will probably respond “yep, I do that”
However, it’s definitely a case of “when knowing isn’t the problem”, or at the very least, it’s not the whole problem.
Stop overcompensating and address the thing directly
We all do it, whether in chronic pain, or just a transient injury. But we all need to do less of it, because it causes a lot of harm.
Example: you have pain in your right knee, so you sit, stand, walk slightly differently to try to ease that pain. It works, albeit marginally, at least for a while, but now you also have pain in your left hip and your lumbar vertebrae, because of how you leaned a certain way. You adjust how you sit, stand, walk, to try to ease both sets of pain, and before you know it, now your neck also hurts, you have a headache, and you’re sure your digestion isn’t doing what it should and you feel dizzy when you stand. The process continues, and before long, what started off as a pain in one knee has now turned your whole body into a twisted aching wreck.
What has happened: the overcompensation due to the original pain has unduly stressed a connected part of the body, which we then overcompensate for somewhere else, bringing down the whole body like a set of dominoes.
For more on this: Understanding How Pain Can Spread
“Ok, but how? I can’t walk normally on that knee!”
We’re keeping the knee as an example here, but please bear in mind it could be any chronic pain and resultant disability.
Note: if you found the word “disability” offputting, please remember: if it adversely affects your abilities, it is a disability. Disabilities are not something that only happen to other people! They will happen to most of us at some point!
Ask yourself: what can you do, and what can’t you do?
For example:
- maybe you can walk, but not normally
- maybe you can walk normally, but not without great pain
- maybe you can walk normally, but not at your usual walking pace
First challenge: accept your limitations. If you can’t walk at your usual walking pace without great pain and/or throwing your posture to the dogs, then walk more slowly. To Hell with societal expectations that it shouldn’t take so long to walk from A to B. Take the time you need.
Second challenge: accept help. It doesn’t have to be help from another person (although it could be). It might be accepting the help of a cane, or maybe even a wheelchair for “flare-up” days. Society, especially American society which is built on ideas of self-sufficiency, has framed a lot of such options as “giving up”, but if they help you get about your day while minimizing doing further harm to your body, then they can be good and even health-preserving things. Same goes for painkillers if they help you from doing more harm to your body by balling up tension in a part of your body in a way that ends up spreading out and laying ruin to your whole body.
Speaking of which:
How Much Does It Hurt? Get The Right Help For Your Pain
After which, you might want to check out:
The 7 Approaches To Pain Management
and
Science-Based Alternative Pain Relief
Third challenge: deserves its own section, so…
Do what you can
If you have chronic pain (or any chronic illness, really), you are probably fed up of hearing how this latest diet will fix you, or yoga will fix you, and so on. But, while these things may not be miracle cures…
- A generally better diet really will lessen symptoms and avoid flare-ups (a low-inflammation diet is a great start for lessening the symptoms of a lot of chronic illnesses)
- Doing what exercise you can, being mindful of your limitations yes but still keeping moving as much as possible, will also prevent (or at least slow) deterioration. Consider consulting a physiotherapist for guidance (a doctor will more likely just say “rest, take it easy”, whereas a physiotherapist will be able to give more practical advice).
- Getting good sleep may be a nightmare in the case of chronic pain (or other chronic illnesses! Here’s to those late night hyperglycemia incidents for Type 1 Diabetics that then need monitoring for the next few hours while taking insulin and hoping it goes back down) but whatever you can do to prioritize it, do it.
Want to read more?
We reviewed a little while ago a great book about this; the title sounds like a lot of woo, but we promise the content is extremely well-referenced science:
…and if your issue is back pain specifically, we highly recommend:
Healing Back Pain: The Mind-Body Connection – by Dr. John Sarno
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
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