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:

Take care!

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  • A Planet of Viruses – by Carl Zimmer

    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.

    We’ve reviewed numerous books on the immune system before, and this one’s mostly not about that.

    Instead, this one focuses on the viruses themselves, and the part they play in our world, for good and for ill. Popular awareness tends to focus on the ill, of course.

    But, there’s a lot that viruses do for us too, including:

    • Weak/harmless viruses that keep our immune systems on their toes and ready
    • Bacteriophage viruses that kill and consume pathogens that, left unchecked, would do the same to us
    • Endogenous retroviruses that have become symbiotic with the human organism, without which our species would quickly go extinct

    He also talks about biological warfare, and how we cannot bury our heads in the sand by avoiding research on those grounds, because someone will always do it anyway, so (as the motto of the immune system itself might say), best to be prepared.

    The author is a science journalist, by the way, and has no PhD, but does have a flock of Fellowships and assorted scientific awards and honors, so he appears to be doing good work so far as the scientific community is concerned.

    Bottom line: if you’d like to know more about viruses than “they’re very small and can cause harm”, then this book will open a whole new world.

    Click here to check out A Planet of Viruses, and upgrade your knowledge!

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  • Science of Stretch – by Dr. Leada Malek

    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.

    This book is part of a “Science of…” series, of which we’ve reviewed some others before (Yoga | HIIT | Pilates), and needless to say, we like them.

    You may be wondering: is this just that thing where a brand releases the same content under multiple names to get more sales, and no, it’s not (long-time 10almonds readers will know: if it were, we’d say so!).

    While flexibility and mobility are indeed key benefits in yoga and Pilates, they looked into the science of what was going on in yoga asanas and Pilates exercises, stretchy or otherwise, so the stretching element was not nearly so deep as in this book.

    In this one, Dr. Malek takes us on a wonderful tour of (relevant) human anatomy and physiology, far deeper than most pop-science books go into when it comes to stretching, so that the reader can really understand every aspect of what’s going on in there.

    This is important, because it means busting a lot of myths (instead of busting tendons and ligaments and things), understanding why certain things work and (critically!) why certain things don’t, how certain stretching practices will sabotage our progress, things like that.

    It’s also beautifully clearly illustrated! The cover art is a fair representation of the illustrations inside.

    Bottom line: if you want to get serious about stretching, this is a top-tier book and you won’t regret it.

    Click here to check out Science of Stretching, and learn what you can do and how!

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  • Butter vs Margarine

    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.

    Butter vs Margarine

    Yesterday, we asked you for your (health-related) opinion on butter vs margarine, and got the above-depicted, below-described, set of responses:

    • A little over 60% said butter is a health food and margarine is basically plastic with trans fats
    • A little over 20% said that both are woeful and it’s better to avoid both
    • A little over 10% said that margarine is a lighter option, and butter is a fast track to cardiovascular disease.

    Comments included (we will summarize/paraphrase, for space):

    • “…in moderation, though”
    • “I’m vegan so I use vegan butter but I know it’s not great, so I use it sparingly”
    • “butter is healthy if and only if it’s grass-fed”
    • “margarine has unpronounceable ingredients”

    To address those quickly:

    • “…in moderation” is a stipulation with which one can rarely go too far wrong
    • Same! Speaking for myself (your writer here, hi) and not for the company
    • Grass-fed is indeed better; alas that so little of it is grass-fed, in the US!
    • Butter contains eicosatrienoic acid, linolelaidic acid, and more*. Sometimes big words don’t mean that something is worse for the health, though!

    *Source: Quality characteristics, chemical composition, and sensory properties of butter from cows on pasture versus indoor feeding systems

    So, what does the science say?

    Butter is a health food: True or False?

    True or False, depending on amount! Moderation is definitely key, but we’ll return to that (and why not to have more than a small amount of butter) later. But it is a rich source of many nutrients, iff it’s grass-fed, anyway.

    The nutritional profile of something isn’t a thing that’s too contentious, so rather than take too much time on it, in this case we’ll point you back up to the scientific paper we linked above, or if you prefer a pop-science rendering, here’s a nice quick rundown:

    7 Reasons to Switch to Grass-Fed Butter

    Margarine is basically plastic with trans fats: True or False?

    False and usually False now, respectively, contingently.

    On the first part: chemically, it’s simply not “basically plastic” and everything in it is digestible

    On the second part: it depends on the margarine, and here’s where it pays to read labels. Historically, margarines all used to be high in trans fats (which are indeed woeful for the health). Nowadays, since trans fats have such a (well-earned) bad press, there are increasingly many margarines with low (or no) trans fats, and depending on your country, it may be that all margarines no longer have such:

    ❝It’s a public health success story. Consumers no longer have to worry about reading product nutritional labels to see if they contain hydrogenated oils and trans fats. They can just know that they no longer do❞

    Source: Margarines now nutritionally better than butter after hydrogenated oil ban

    So this is one where the science is clear (trans fats are unequivocally bad), but the consumer information is not always (it may be necessary to read labels, to know whether a margarine is conforming to the new guidelines).

    Butter is a fast track to cardiovascular disease: True or False?

    True or False depending on amount. In moderation, predictably it’s not a big deal.

    But for example, the World Health Organization recommends that saturated fats (of which butter is a generous source) make up no more than 10% of our calorie intake:

    Source: Saturated fatty acid and trans-fatty acid intake for adults and children: WHO guideline

    So if you have a 2000 kcal daily intake, that would mean consuming not more than 200 kcal from butter, which is approximately two tablespoons.

    If you’d like a deeper look into the complexities of saturated fats (for and against), you might like our previous main feature specifically about such:

    Can Saturated Fats Be Healthy?

    Enjoy!

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  • Mythbusting Cookware Materials

    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.

    In Wednesday’s newsletter, we asked you what kind of cookware you mostly use, and got the above-depicted, below-described, set of responses:

    • About 45% said stainless steel
    • About 21% said cast iron
    • About 15% said non-stick (e.g. Teflon)
    • About 9% said enamel
    • About 6% said aluminum
    • And 1 person selected “something else”, but then commented to the contrary, writing “I use all of the above”

    So, what does the science say about these options?

    Stainless steel cookware is safe: True or False?

    True! Assuming good quality and normal use, anyway. There really isn’t a lot to say about this, because it’s very unexciting. So long as it is what it is labelled as: there’s nothing coating it, nothing comes out of it unless you go to extremes*, and it’s easy to clean.

    *If you cook for long durations at very high temperatures, it can leach nickel and chromium into food. What this means in practical terms: if you are using stainless steel to do deep-frying, then maybe stop that, and also consider going easy on deep-frying in general anyway, because obviously deep-frying is unhealthy for other reasons.

    Per normal use, however: pretty much the only way (good quality) stainless steel cookware will harm you is if you touch it while it’s hot, or if it falls off a shelf onto your head.

    That said, do watch out for cheap stainless steel cookware that can contain a lot of impurities, including heavy metals. Since you probably don’t have a mass spectrometer and/or chemistry lab at home to check for those impurities, your best guard here is simply to buy from a reputable brand with credible certifications.

    Ceramic cookware is safe: True or False?

    True… Most of the time! Ceramic pans usually have metal parts and a ceramic cooking surface coated with a very thin layer of silicon. Those metal parts will be as safe as the metals used, so if that’s stainless steel, you’re just as safe as the above. As for the silicon, it is famously inert and body-safe (which is why it’s used in body implants).

    However: ceramic cookware that doesn’t have an obvious metal part and is marketed as being pure ceramic, will generally be sealed with some kind of glaze that can leach heavy metals contaminants into the food; here’s an example:

    Lead toxicity from glazed ceramic cookware

    Copper cookware is safe: True or False?

    False! This is one we forgot to mention in the poll, as one doesn’t see a lot of it nowadays. The copper from copper pans can leach into food. Now, of course copper is an important mineral that we must get from our diet, but the amount of copper that that can leach into food from copper pans is far too much, and can induce copper toxicity.

    In addition, copper cookware has been found to be, on average, highly contaminated with lead:

    Assessing Leaching of Potentially Hazardous Elements from Cookware during Cooking: A Serious Public Health Concern

    Non-stick cookware contaminates the food with microplastics: True or False?

    True! If we were to discuss all the common non-stick contaminants here, this email would no longer fit (there’s a size limit before it gets clipped by most email services).

    Suffice it to say: the non-stick coating, polytetrafluoroethylene, is itself a PFAS, that is to say, part of the category of chemicals considered environmental pollutants, and associated with a long list of health issues in humans (wherein the level of PFAS in our bloodstream is associated with higher incidence of many illnesses):

    Presence of Perfluoroalkyl and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) in Food Contact Materials (FCM) and Its Migration to Food

    You may have noticed, of course, that the “non-stick” coating doesn’t stick very well to the pan, either, and will tend to come off over time, even if used carefully.

    Also, any kind of wet cooking (e.g. saucepans, skillets, rice cooker inserts) will leach PFAS into the food. In contrast, a non-stick baking tray lined with baking paper (thus: a barrier between the tray and your food) is really not such an issue.

    We wrote about PFAS before, so if you’d like a more readable pop-science article than the scientific paper above, then check out:

    PFAS Exposure & Cancer: The Numbers Are High

    Aluminum cookware contaminates the food with aluminum: True or False?

    True! But not usually in sufficient quantities to induce aluminum toxicity, unless you are aluminum pans Georg who eats half a gram of aluminum per day, who is a statistical outlier and should not be counted.

    That’s a silly example, but an actual number; the dose required for aluminum toxicity in blood is 100mg/L, and you have about 5 liters of blood.

    Unless you are on kidney dialysis (because 95% of aluminum is excreted by the kidneys, and kidney dialysis solution can itself contain aluminum), you will excrete aluminum a lot faster than you can possibly absorb it from cookware. On the other hand, you can get too much of it from it being a permitted additive in foods and medications, for example if you are taking antacids they often have a lot of aluminum oxide in them—but that is outside the scope of today’s article.

    However, aluminum may not be the real problem in aluminum pans:

    ❝In addition, aluminum (3.2 ± 0.25 to 4.64 ± 0.20 g/kg) and copper cookware (2.90 ± 0.12 g/kg) were highly contaminated with lead.

    The time and pH-dependent study revealed that leaching of metals (Al, Pb, Ni, Cr, Cd, Cu, and Fe, etc.) into food was predominantly from anodized and non-anodized aluminum cookware.

    More metal leaching was observed from new aluminum cookware compared to old. Acidic food was found to cause more metals to leach during cooking.❞

    ~ the same paper we cited when talking about copper

    Cast iron cookware contaminates the food with iron: True or False?

    True, but unlike with the other metals discussed, this is purely a positive, and indeed, it’s even recommended as a good way to fortify one’s diet with iron:

    Effect of cooking food in iron-containing cookware on increase in blood hemoglobin level and iron content of the food: A systematic review

    The only notable counterpoint we could find for this is if you have hemochromatosis, a disorder in which the body is too good at absorbing iron and holding onto it.

    Thinking of getting some new cookware?

    Here are some example products of high-quality safe materials on Amazon, but of course feel free to shop around:

    Stainless Steel | Ceramic* | Cast Iron

    *it says “non-stick” in the description, but don’t worry, it’s ceramic, not Teflon etc, and is safe

    Bonus: rice cooker with stainless steel inner pot

    Take care!

    Don’t Forget…

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  • He Thinks His Wife Died in an Understaffed Hospital. Now He’s Trying to Change the Industry.

    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.

    For the past year, police Detective Tim Lillard has spent most of his waking hours unofficially investigating his wife’s death.

    The question has never been exactly how Ann Picha-Lillard died on Nov. 19, 2022: She succumbed to respiratory failure after an infection put too much strain on her weakened lungs. She was 65.

    For Tim Lillard, the question has been why.

    Lillard had been in the hospital with his wife every day for a month. Nurses in the intensive care unit had told him they were short-staffed, and were constantly rushing from one patient to the next.

    Lillard tried to pitch in where he could: brushing Ann’s shoulder-length blonde hair or flagging down help when her tracheostomy tube gurgled — a sign of possible respiratory distress.

    So the day he walked into the ICU and saw staff members huddled in Ann’s room, he knew it was serious. He called the couple’s adult children: “It’s Mom,” he told them. “Come now.”

    All he could do then was sit on Ann’s bed and hold her hand, watching as staff members performed chest compressions, desperately trying to save her life.

    A minute ticked by. Then another. Lillard’s not sure how long the CPR continued — long enough for the couple’s son to arrive and take a seat on the other side of Ann’s bed, holding her other hand.

    Finally, the intensive care doctor called it and the team stopped CPR. Time of death: 12:37 p.m.

    Lillard didn’t know what to do in a world without Ann. They had been married almost 25 years. “We were best friends,” he said.

    Just days before her death, nurses had told Lillard that Ann could be discharged to a rehabilitation center as soon as the end of the week. Then, suddenly, she was gone. Lillard didn’t understand what had happened.

    Lillard said he now believes that overwhelmed, understaffed nurses hadn’t been able to respond in time as Ann’s condition deteriorated. And he has made it his mission to fight for change, joining some nursing unions in a push for mandatory ratios that would limit the number of patients in a nurse’s care. “I without a doubt believe 100% Ann would still be here today if they had staffing levels, mandatory staffing levels, especially in ICU,” Lillard said.

    Last year, Oregon became the second state after California to pass hospital-wide nurse ratios that limit the number of patients in a nurse’s care. Michigan, Maine, and Pennsylvania are now weighing similar legislation.

    But supporters of mandatory ratios are going up against a powerful hospital industry spending millions of dollars to kill those efforts. And hospitals and health systems say any staffing ratio regulations, however well-intentioned, would only put patients in greater danger.

    Putting Patients at Risk

    By next year, the United States could have as many as 450,000 fewer nurses than it needs, according to one estimate. The hospital industry blames covid-19 burnout, an aging workforce, a large patient population, and an insufficient pipeline of new nurses entering the field.

    But nursing unions say that’s not the full story. There are now 4.7 million registered nurses in the country, more than ever before.

    The problem, the unions say, is a hospital industry that’s been intentionally understaffing their units for years in order to cut costs and bolster profits. The unions say there isn’t a shortage of nurses but a shortage of nurses willing to work in those conditions.

    The nurse staffing crisis is now affecting patient care. The number of Michigan nurses who say they know of a patient who has died because of understaffing has nearly doubled in recent years, according to a Michigan Nurses Association survey last year.

    Just months before Ann Picha-Lillard’s death, nurses and doctors at the health system where she died had asked the Michigan attorney general to investigate staffing cuts they believed were leading to dangerous conditions, including patient deaths, according to The Detroit News.

    But Lillard didn’t know any of that when he drove his wife to the hospital in October 2022. She had been feeling short of breath for a few weeks after she and Lillard had mild covid infections. They were both vaccinated, but Ann was immunocompromised. She suffered from rheumatoid arthritis, a condition that had also caused scarring in her lungs.

    To be safe, doctors at DMC Huron Valley-Sinai Hospital wanted to keep Ann for observation. After a few days in the facility, she developed pneumonia. Doctors told the couple that Ann needed to be intubated. Ann was terrified but Lillard begged her to listen to the doctors. Tearfully, she agreed.

    With Ann on a ventilator in the ICU, it seemed clear to Lillard that nurses were understaffed and overwhelmed. One nurse told him they had been especially short-staffed lately, Lillard said.

    “The alarms would go off for the medications, they’d come into the room, shut off the alarm when they get low, run to the medication room, come back, set them down, go to the next room, shut off alarms,” Lillard recalled. “And that was going on all the time.”

    Lillard felt bad for the nurses, he said. “But obviously, also for my wife. That’s why I tried doing as much as I could when I was there. I would comb her hair, clean her, just keep an eye on things. But I had no idea what was really going on.”

    Finally, Ann’s health seemed to be stabilizing. A nurse told Lillard they’d be able to discharge Ann, possibly by the end of that week.

    By Nov. 17, Ann was no longer sedated and she cried when she saw Lillard and her daughter. Still unable to speak, she tried to mouth words to her husband “but we couldn’t understand what she was saying,” Lillard said.

    The next day, Lillard went home feeling hopeful, counting down the days until Ann could leave the hospital.

    Less than 24 hours later, Ann died.

    Lillard couldn’t wrap his head around how things went downhill so fast. Ann’s underlying lung condition, the infection, and her weakened state could have proved fatal in the best of circumstances. But Lillard wanted to understand how Ann had gone from nearly discharged to dying, seemingly overnight.

    He turned his dining room table into a makeshift office and started with what he knew. The day Ann died, he remembered her medical team telling him that her heart rate had spiked and she had developed another infection the night before. Lillard said he interviewed two DMC Huron Valley-Sinai nurse administrators, and had his own doctor look through Ann’s charts and test results from the hospital. “Everybody kept telling me: sepsis, sepsis, sepsis,” he said.

    Sepsis is when an infection triggers an extreme reaction in the body that can cause rapid organ failure. It’s one of the leading causes of death in U.S. hospitals. Some experts say up to 80% of sepsis deaths are preventable, while others say the percentage is far lower.

    Lives can be saved when sepsis is caught and treated fast, which requires careful attention to small changes in vital signs. One study found that for every additional patient a nurse had to care for, the mortality rate from sepsis increased by 12%.

    Lillard became convinced that had there been more nurses working in the ICU, someone could have caught what was happening to Ann.

    “They just didn’t have the time,” he said.

    DMC Huron Valley-Sinai’s director of communications and media relations, Brian Taylor, declined a request for comment about the 2022 staffing complaint to the Michigan attorney general.

    Following the Money

    When Lillard asked the hospital for copies of Ann’s medical records, DMC Huron Valley-Sinai told him he’d have to request them from its parent company in Texas.

    Like so many hospitals in recent years, the Lillards’ local health system had been absorbed by a series of other corporations. In 2011, the Detroit Medical Center health system was bought for $1.5 billion by Vanguard Health Systems, which was backed by the private equity company Blackstone Group.

    Two years after that, in 2013, Vanguard itself was acquired by Tenet Healthcare, a for-profit company based in Dallas that, according to its website, operates 480 ambulatory surgery centers and surgical hospitals, 52 hospitals, and approximately 160 additional outpatient centers.

    As health care executives face increasing pressure from investors, nursing unions say hospitals have been intentionally understaffing nurses to reduce labor costs and increase revenue. Also, insurance reimbursements incentivize keeping nurse staffing levels low. “Hospitals are not directly reimbursed for nursing services in the same way that a physician bills for their services,” said Karen Lasater, an associate professor of nursing in the Center for Health Outcomes and Policy Research at the University of Pennsylvania. “And because hospitals don’t perceive nursing as a service line, but rather a cost center, they think about nursing as: How can we reduce this to the lowest denominator possible?” she said.

    Lasater is a proponent of mandatory nurse ratios. “The nursing shortage is not a pipeline problem, but a leaky bucket problem,” she said. “And the solutions to this crisis need to address the root cause of the issue, which is why nurses are saying they’re leaving employment. And it’s rooted in unsafe staffing. It’s not safe for the patients, but it’s also not safe for nurses.”

    A Battle Between Hospitals and Unions

    In November, almost one year after Ann’s death, Lillard told a room of lawmakers at the Michigan State Capitol that he believes the Safe Patient Care Act could save lives. The health policy committee in the Michigan House was holding a hearing on the proposed act, which would limit the amount of mandatory overtime a nurse can be forced to work, and require hospitals to make their staffing levels available to the public.

    Most significantly, the bills would require hospitals to have mandatory, minimum nurse-to-patient ratios. For example: one nurse for every patient in the ICU; one for every three patients in the emergency room; a nurse for triage; and one nurse for every four postpartum birthing patients and well-baby care.

    Efforts to pass mandatory ratio laws failed in Washington and Minnesota last year after facing opposition from the hospital industry. In Minnesota, the Minnesota Nurses Association accused the Mayo Clinic of using “blackmail tactics”: Mayo had told lawmakers it would pull billions of dollars in investment from the state if mandatory ratio legislation passed. Soon afterward, lawmakers removed nurse ratios from the legislation.

    While Lillard waited for his turn to speak to Michigan lawmakers about the Safe Patient Care Act in November, members of the Michigan Nurses Association, which says it represents some 13,000 nurses, told lawmakers that its units were dangerously understaffed. They said critical care nurses were sometimes caring for up to 11 patients at a time.

    “Last year I coded someone in an ICU for 10 minutes, all alone, because there was no one to help me,” said the nurses association president and registered nurse Jamie Brown, reading from another nurse’s letter.

    “I have been left as the only specially trained nurse to take care of eight babies on the unit: eight fragile newborns,” said Carolyn Clemens, a registered nurse from the Grand Blanc area of Michigan.

    Nikia Parker said she has left full-time emergency room nursing, a job she believes is her calling. After her friend died in the hospital where she worked, she was left wondering whether understaffing may have contributed to his death.

    “If the Safe Patient Care Act passed, and we have ratios, I’m one of those nurses who would return to the bedside full time,” Parker told lawmakers. “And so many of my co-workers who have left would join me.”

    But not all nurses agree that mandatory ratios are a good idea. 

    While the American Nurses Association supports enforceable ratios as an “essential approach,” that organization’s Michigan chapter does not, saying there may not be enough nurses in the state to satisfy the requirements of the Safe Patient Care Act.

    For some lawmakers, the risk of collateral damage seems too high. State Rep. Graham Filler said he worries that mandating ratios could backfire.

    “We’re going to severely hamper health care in the state of Michigan. I’m talking closed wards because you can’t meet the ratio in a bill. The inability for a hospital to treat an emergent patient. So it feels kind of to me like a gamble we’re taking,” said Filler, a Republican.

    Michigan hospitals are already struggling to fill some 8,400 open positions, according to the Michigan Health & Hospital Association. That association says that complying with the Safe Patient Care Act would require hiring 13,000 nurses.

    Every major health system in the state signed a letter opposing mandatory ratios, saying it would force them to close as many as 5,100 beds.

    Lillard watched the debate play out in the hearing. “That’s a scare tactic, in my opinion, where the hospitals say we’re going to have to start closing stuff down,” he said.

    He doesn’t think legislation on mandatory ratios — which are still awaiting a vote in the Michigan House’s health policy committee — are a “magic bullet” for such a complex, national problem. But he believes they could help.

    “The only way these hospitals and the administrations are gonna make any changes, and even start moving towards making it better, is if they’re forced to,” Lillard said.

    Seated in the center of the hearing room in Lansing, next to a framed photo of Ann, Lillard’s hands shook as he recounted those final minutes in the ICU.

    “Please take action so that no other person or other family endures this loss,” he said. “You can make a difference in saving lives.”

    Grief is one thing, Lillard said, but it’s another thing to be haunted by doubts, to worry that your loved one’s care was compromised before they ever walked through the hospital doors. What he wants most, he said, is to prevent any other family from having to wonder, “What if?”

    This article is from a partnership that includes Michigan Public, NPR, and KFF Health News.

    KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

    USE OUR CONTENT

    This story can be republished for free (details).

    KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

    Subscribe to KFF Health News’ free Morning Briefing.

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  • Do CBD Gummies Work?

    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? 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

    ❝I take CBD gummies. I don’t know if they are worth buying. Can you find a study on the effectiveness of gummies❞

    If you take them, and you’re not sure whether they’re worth it, then it sounds like you’re not getting any observable benefit from them?

    If so, that would seem to answer your question, since presumably the reason that you are taking them is for relaxation and/or pain relief, so if you’re not getting the results you want, then no, they are not worth it.

    However! CBD gummies are an incredibly diverse and not-well-studied product, so far, given the relative novelty of their legality. By diverse we mean, they’re not well-standardized.

    In other words: the CBD gummies you get could be completely unlike CBD gummies from a different source.

    CBD itself (i.e. in forms other than just gummies, and mostly as oil) has been studied somewhat better, and we did a main feature on it here:

    CBD Oil’s Many Benefits

    And while we’re at it:

    Cannabis Myths vs Reality ← This one is about cannabis products in general, and includes discussion of THC content and effects, which might not be so relevant to you, but may to some readers.

    Companies selling CBD and CBD gummies may make bold claims that are not yet backed by science, so if you are buying them for those reasons, you might want to be aware:

    Selling cannabidiol products in Canada: a framing analysis of advertising claims by online retailers

    One thing that we would add is that even though CBD is generally recognized as safe, it is possible to overdose on CBD gummies, so do watch your limits:

    A Case of Toxicity from Cannabidiol Gummy Ingestion

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