Healthy Habits For Your Heart – by Monique Tello
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Did you guess we’d review this one today? Well, you’ve already had a taste of what Dr. Tello has to offer, but if you want to take your heart health seriously, this incredibly accessible guide is excellent.
Because Dr. Tello doesn’t assume prior knowledge, the first part of the book (the first three chapters) are given over to “heart and habit basics”—heart science, the effect your lifestyle can have on such, and how to change your habits.
The second part of the book is rather larger, and addresses changing foundational habits, nutrition habits, weight loss/maintenance, healthy activity habits, and specifically addressing heart-harmful habits (especially drinking, smoking, and the like).
She then follows up with a section of recipes, references, and other useful informational appendices.
The writing style throughout is super simple and clear, even when giving detailed clinical information. This isn’t a dusty old doctor who loves the sound of their own jargon, this is good heart health rendered as easy and accessible as possible to all.
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Cordyceps: Friend Or Foe?
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Cordyceps: friend or foe?
Cordyceps is a famously frightening fungus. It’s the one responsible for “zombie ants” and other zombie creatures, and it’s the basis for the existential threat to humanity in the TV show The Last of Us.
It’s a parasitic fungus that controls the central and peripheral nervous systems of its host, slowly replacing the host’s body, as well as growing distinctive spines that erupt out of the host’s body. Taking over motor functions, it compels the host to do two main things, which are to eat more food, and climb to a position that will be good to release spores from.
Fortunately, none of that matters to humans. Cordyceps does not (unlike in the TV show) affect humans that way.
What does Cordyceps do in humans?
Cordyceps (in various strains) is enjoyed as a health supplement, based on a long history of use in Traditional Chinese Medicine, and nowadays it’s coming under a scientific spotlight too.
The main health claims for it are:
- Against inflammation
- Against aging
- Against cancer
- For blood sugar management
- For heart health
- For exercise performance
Sounds great! What does the science say?
There’s a lot more science for the first three (which are all closely related to each other, and often overlapping in mechanism and effect).
So let’s take a look:
Against inflammation
The science looks promising for this, but studies so far have either been in vitro (cell cultures in petri dishes), or else murine in vivo (mouse studies), for example:
- Anti-inflammatory effects of Cordyceps mycelium in murine macrophages
- Cordyceps sinensis as an immunomodulatory agent
- Immunomodulatory functions of extracts from Cordyceps cicadae
- Cordyceps pruinosa inhibits in vitro and in vivo inflammatory mediators
In summary: we can see that it has anti-inflammatory properties for mice and in the lab; we’d love to see the results of studies done on humans, though. Also, while it has anti-inflammatory properties, it performed less well than commonly-prescribed anti-inflammatory drugs, for example:
❝C. militaris can modulate airway inflammation in asthma, but it is less effective than prednisolone or montelukast.❞
Against aging
Because examining the anti-aging effects of a substance requires measuring lifespans and repeating the experiment, anti-aging studies do not tend to be done on humans, because they would take lifetimes to perform. To this end, it’s inconvenient, but not a criticism of Cordyceps, that studies have been either mouse studies (short lifespan, mammals like us) or fruit fly studies (very short lifespan, genetically surprisingly similar to us).
The studies have had positive results, with typical lifespan extensions of 15–20%:
- The lifespan-extending effect of Cordyceps sinensis in normal mice
- Cordyceps sinensis oral liquid prolongs the lifespan of the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster
- Anti-aging activity of polysaccharides from Cordyceps militaris
- Anti-aging effect of Cordyceps sinensis extract
Against cancer
Once again, the studies here have been in vitro, or murine in vivo. They do look good though:
In vitro (human cell cultures in a lab):
In vivo (mouse studies):
Summary of these is: Cordyceps quite reliably inhibits tumor growth in vitro (human cell cultures) and in vivo (mouse studies). However, trials in human cancer patients are so far conspicuous by their absence.
For blood sugar management
Cordyceps appears to mimic the action of insulin, without triggering insulin sensitivity. For example:
The anti-hyperglycemic activity of the fruiting body of Cordyceps in diabetic rats
There were some other rat/mouse studies with similar results. No studies in humans yet.
For heart health
Cordyceps contains adenosine. You may remember that caffeine owes part of its stimulant effect to blocking adenosine, the hormone that makes us feel sleepy. So in this way, Cordyceps partially does the opposite of what caffeine does, and may be useful against arrhythmia:
Cardiovascular protection of Cordyceps sinensis act partially via adenosine receptors
For exercise performance
A small (30 elderly participants) study found that Cordyceps supplementation improved VO2 max by 7% over the course of six weeks:
However, another small study (22 young athletes) failed to reproduce those results:
Cordyceps Sinensis supplementation does not improve endurance exercise performance
In summary…
Cordyceps almost certainly has anti-inflammation, anti-aging, and anti-cancer benefits.
Cordyceps may have other benefits too, but the evidence is thinner on the ground for those, so far.
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Taurine: An Anti-Aging Powerhouse? Exploring Its Unexpected Benefits
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Dr. Mark Rosenberg explains:
Not a stimulant, but…
- Its presence in energy drinks often causes people to assume it’s a stimulant, but it’s not. In fact, it’s a GABA-agonist, thus having a calming effect.
- The real reason it’s in energy drinks is because it helps increase mitochondrial ATP production (ATP = adenosine triphosphate = how cells store energy that’s ready to use; mitochondria take glucose and make ATP)
- Taurine is also anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, and anticancer.
- In the category of aging, human studies are slow to give results for obvious reasons, but mouse studies show that supplementing taurine in middle-aged mice increased their lifespan by 10–12%, as well as improving various physiological markers of aging.
- Taking a closer look at aging—literally; looking at cellular aging—taurine reduces cellular senescence and protects telomeres, thus decreasing DNA mutations.
For more on the science of these, plus Dr. Rosenberg’s personal experience, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
- Taurine’s Benefits For Heart Health And More
- Dr. Greger’s Anti-Aging Eight
- Age & Aging: What Can (And Can’t) We Do About It?
Take care!
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“The Longevity Vitamin” (That’s Not A Vitamin)
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The Magic of Mushrooms
“The Longevity Vitamin that’s not a vitamin” is a great tagline for what’s actually an antioxidant amino acid nutraceutical, but in this case, we’re not the ones spearheading its PR, but rather, the Journal of Nutritional Science:
Is ergothioneine a “longevity vitamin” limited in the American diet?
It can be found in all foods, to some extent, but usually in much tinier amounts than would be useful. The reason for this is that it’s synthesized by a variety of microbes (mostly fungi and actinobacteria), and enters the food chain via vegetables that are grown in soil that contain such (which is basically all soil, unless you were to go out of your way to sterilize it, or something really unusually happened).
About those fungi? That includes common popular edible fungi, where it is found quite generously. An 85g (3oz) portion of (most) mushrooms contains about 5mg of ergothioneine, the consumption of which is associated with a 16% reduced all-cause mortality:
However… Most Americans don’t eat that many mushrooms, and those polled averaged 1.1mg/day ergothioneine (in contrast with, for example, Italians’ 4.6mg/day average).
Antioxidant properties
While its antioxidant properties aren’t the most exciting quality, they are worth a mention, on account of their potency:
The biology of ergothioneine, an antioxidant nutraceutical
This is also part of its potential bid to get classified as a vitamin, because…
❝Decreased blood and/or plasma levels of ergothioneine have been observed in some diseases, suggesting that a deficiency could be relevant to the disease onset or progression❞
Source: Ergothioneine: a diet-derived antioxidant with therapeutic potential
Healthy aging
Building on from the above, ergothioneine has been specifically identified as being associated with healthy aging and the prevention of cardiometabolic diseases:
❝An increasing body of evidence suggests ergothioneine may be an important dietary nutrient for the prevention of a variety of inflammatory and cardiometabolic diseases and ergothioneine has alternately been suggested as a vitamin, “longevity vitamin”, and nutraceutical❞
~ Dr. Bernadette Moore et al., citing more references every few words there
Source: Ergothioneine: an underrecognised dietary micronutrient required for healthy ageing?
Good for the heart = good for the brain
As a general rule of thumb, “what’s good for the heart is good for the brain” is almost always true, and it appears to be so in this case, too:
❝Ergothioneine crosses the blood–brain barrier and has been reported to have beneficial effects in the brain. In this study, we discuss the cytoprotective and neuroprotective properties of ergotheioneine, which may be harnessed for combating neurodegeneration and decline during aging.❞
Source: Ergothioneine: A Stress Vitamin with Antiaging, Vascular, and Neuroprotective Roles?
Want to get some?
You can just eat a portion of mushrooms per day! But if you don’t fancy that, it is available as a supplement in convenient 1/day capsule form too.
We don’t sell it, but for your convenience, here is an example product on Amazon
Enjoy!
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Meals That Heal – by Dr. Carolyn Williams
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Inflammation is implicated as a contributory or casual factor in almost all chronic diseases (and still exacerbates the ones in which it’s not directly implicated causally), so if there’s one area of health to focus on with one’s diet, then reducing inflammation is a top candidate.
This book sets about doing exactly that.
You may be wondering whether, per the book’s subtitle, they can really all be done in 30 minutes or under. The answer is: no, not unless you have a team of sous-chefs to do all the prep work for you, and line up everything mise-en-place style for when you start the clock. If you do have that team of sous-chefs working for you, then you can probably do most of them in under 30 minutes. If you don’t have that team, then budget about an hour in total, sometimes less, sometimes more, depending on the recipe.
The recipes themselves are mostly Mediterranean-inspired, though you might want to do a few swaps where the author has oddly recommended using seed oils instead of olive oil, or plant milk in place of where she has used dairy milk in a couple of “recipes” for smoothies. You might also want to be a little more generous with the seasonings, if you’re anything like this reviewer.
Bottom line: if you’re looking for an anti-inflammatory starter cookbook, you could do worse than this. You could probably do better, too, such as starting with The Inflammation Spectrum – by Dr. Will Cole.
Alternatively, click here if you want to check out Meals That Heal, and dive straight in!
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Anti-Inflammatory Pineapple Fried Rice
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Fried rice is not most people’s go-to when one thinks of health food, but this one is. It’s packed with plenty of nutrients, many of which are anti-inflammatory, but the real star is the pineapple (with its high bromelain content and thus particularly potent benefits).
You will need
- 2½ cups cooked wholegrain basmati rice (you can use our Tasty Versatile Rice recipe if you don’t already have leftovers to use)
- 1 cup pineapple chunks
- ½ red onion, diced
- 1 red bell pepper, diced
- ½ cup sweetcorn
- ½ peas
- 3 green onions, chopped
- 2 serrano peppers, chopped (omit if you don’t care for heat)
- 2 tbsp coconut oil
- 1 tbsp grated fresh ginger
- 1 tbsp black pepper, coarse ground
Method
(we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)
1) Fry the red onion, serrano peppers, and ginger in the coconut oil over a medium heat, stirring frequently, for about 3 minutes.
2) Add the pineapple, bell pepper, sweetcorn, peas, and black pepper, stirring frequently, for about another 3 minutes.
3) Add the rice, stirring gently but thoroughly, until fully reheated and mixed in.
4) Serve, garnishing with the green onions.
Enjoy!
Want to learn more?
For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:
- Eat To Beat Inflammation
- Ginger Does A Lot More Than You Think
- Black Pepper’s Impressive Anti-Cancer Arsenal (And More)
- Bromelain vs Inflammation & Much More
Take care!
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Welcoming the Unwelcome – by Pema Chödrön
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There’s a lot in life that we don’t get to choose. Some things we have zero control over, like the weather. Others, we can only influence, like our health. Still yet others might give us an illusion of control, only to snatch it away, like a financial reversal or a bereavement.
How, then, to suffer those “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” and come through the other side with an even mind and a whole heart?
Author Pema Chödrön has a guidebook for us.
Quick note: this book does not require the reader to have any particular religious faith to enjoy its benefits, but the author is a nun. As such, the way she describes things is generally within the frame of her religion. So that’s a thing to be aware of in case it might bother you. That said…
The largest part of her approach is one that psychology might describe as rational emotive behavioral therapy.
As such, we are encouraged to indeed “meet with triumph and disaster, and treat those two imposters just the same”, and more importantly, she lays out the tools for us to do so.
Does this mean not caring? No! Quite the opposite. It is expected, and even encouraged, that we might care very much. But: this book looks at how to care and remain compassionate, to others and to ourselves.
For Chödrön, welcoming the unwelcome is about de-toothing hardship by accepting it as a part of the complex tapestry of life, rather than something to be endured.
Bottom line: this book can greatly increase the reader’s ability to “go placidly amid the noise and haste” and bring peace to an often hectic world—starting with our own.
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