How often should you wash your sheets and towels?
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Everyone seems to have a different opinion when it comes to how often towels and bed sheets should be washed. While many people might wonder whether days or weeks is best, in one survey from the United Kingdom, almost half of single men reported not washing their sheets for up to four months at a time.
It’s fairly clear that four months is too long to leave it, but what is the ideal frequency?
Bed linen and towels are quite different and so should be washed at different intervals. While every week or two will generally suffice for sheets, towels are best washed every few days.
Anyway, who doesn’t love the feeling of a fresh set of sheets or the smell of a newly laundered towel?
Why you should wash towels more often
When you dry yourself, you deposit thousands of skin cells and millions of microbes onto the towel. And because you use your towel to dry yourself after a shower or bath, your towel is regularly damp.
You also deposit a hefty amount of dead skin, microbes, sweat and oils onto your sheets every night. But unless you’re a prolific night sweater, your bedding doesn’t get wet after a night’s sleep.
Towels are also made of a thicker material than sheets and therefore tend to stay damp for longer.
So what is it about the dampness that causes a problem? Wet towels are a breeding ground for bacteria and moulds. Moulds especially love damp environments. Although mould won’t necessarily be visible (you would need significant growth to be able to see it) this can lead to an unpleasant smell.
As well as odours, exposure to these microbes in your towels and sheets can cause asthma, allergic skin irritations, or other skin infections.
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So what’s the ideal frequency?
For bedding, it really depends on factors such as whether you have a bath or shower just before going to bed, or if you fall into bed after a long, sweaty day and have your shower in the morning. You will need to wash your sheets more regularly in the latter case. As a rule of thumb, once a week or every two weeks should be fine.
Towels should ideally be washed more regularly – perhaps every few days – while your facecloth should be cleaned after every use. Because it gets completely wet, it will be wet for a longer time, and retain more skin cells and microbes.
Wash your towels at a high temperature (for example, 65°C) as that will kill many microbes. If you are conscious of saving energy, you can use a lower temperature and add a cup of vinegar to the wash. The vinegar will kill microbes and prevent bad smells from developing.
Clean your washing machine regularly and dry the fold in the rubber after every wash, as this is another place microbes like to grow.
Smelly towels
What if you regularly wash your towels, but they still smell bad? One of the reasons for this pong could be that you’ve left them in the washing machine too long after the wash. Especially if it was a warm wash cycle, the time they’re warm and damp will allow microbes to happily grow. Under lab conditions the number of these bacteria can double every 30 minutes.
It’s important to hang your towel out to dry after use and not to leave towels in the washing machine after the cycle has finished. If possible, hang your towels and bedding out in the sun. That will dry them quickly and thoroughly and will foster that lovely fresh, clean cotton smell. Using a dryer is a good alternative if the weather is bad, but outdoors in the sun is always better if possible.
Also, even if your towel is going to be washed, don’t throw a wet towel into the laundry basket, as the damp, dirty towel will be an ideal place for microbes to breed. By the time you get to doing your washing, the towel and the other laundry around it may have acquired a bad smell. And it can be difficult to get your towels smelling fresh again.
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What about ‘self-cleaning’ sheets and towels?
Some companies sell “quick-dry” towels or “self-cleaning” towels and bedding. Quick-dry towels are made from synthetic materials that are weaved in a way to allow them to dry quickly. This would help prevent the growth of microbes and the bad smells that develop when towels are damp for long periods of time.
But the notion of self-cleaning products is more complicated. Most of these products contain nanosilver or copper, antibacterial metals that kill micro-organisms. The antibacterial compounds will stop the growth of bacteria and can be useful to limit smells and reduce the frequency with which you need to clean your sheets and towels.
However, they’re not going to remove dirt like oils, skin flakes and sweat. So as much as I would love the idea of sheets and towels that clean themselves, that’s not exactly what happens.
Also, excessive use of antimicrobials such as nanosilver can lead to microbes becoming resistant to them.
Rietie Venter, Associate professor, Clinical and Health Sciences, University of South Australia
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Creamy Zucchini, Edamame, & Asparagus Linguine
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Protein, fiber, and polyphenols are the dish of the day here:
You will need
- 1½ cups milk (your choice what kind; we recommend soy for its neutral taste, though hazelnut’s nutty flavor would also work in this recipe)
- 6 oz wholegrain linguine (or your pasta of choice)
- 2 zucchini, thinly sliced
- 5 oz edamame beans (frozen is fine)
- 5 oz asparagus tips, cut into 2″ lengths
- ½ bulb garlic, crushed
- 1 tbsp chia seeds
- 1 small handful arugula
- 1 small handful parsley, chopped
- A few mint leaves, chopped
- Juice of ½ lemon
- 2 tsp black pepper, coarse ground
- ½ tsp MSG or 1 tsp low-sodium salt
- Extra virgin olive oil
Method
(we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)
1) Heat some oil in a sauté pan or similar, over a low to medium heat. Add the zucchini and cook for 5 minutes until they start to soften.
2) Add the garlic and continue cooking for 1 minute, stirring gently.
3) Add the milk, bring to the boil, and add the past, chia seeds (the resistant starch from the pasta will help thicken the sauce, as will the chia seeds), and MSG or salt.
4) Reduce the heat, cover, and simmer for 8 minutes.
5) Add the edamame beans and asparagus, and cook for a further 2 minutes, or until the pasta is cooked but still firm to the bite. The sauce should be quite thick now.
6) Stir in the remaining ingredients and serve, adding a garnish if you wish.
Enjoy!
Want to learn more?
For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:
- The Many Health Benefits Of Garlic
- Black Pepper’s Impressive Anti-Cancer Arsenal (And More)
- If You’re Not Taking Chia, You’re Missing Out
Take care!
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Make Your Saliva Better For Your Teeth
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A new study has highlighted the importance of lifestyle factors in shaping the oral microbiome—that is to say, how the things we do affect the bacteria that live in our mouths:
Nepali oral microbiomes reflect a gradient of lifestyles from traditional to industrialized
Neither the study title nor the abstract elucidate how, exactly, one impacts the other, but the study itself does (of course) contain that information; we read it, and the short version is:
In terms of the extremes of “most traditional” to “most industrialized”, foragers have the most diverse oral microbiomes (that’s good), and people with an American industrialized lifestyle had the least diverse oral microbiomes (that’s bad). Between the two extremes, we see the gradient promised by the title.
If you do feel like checking it out, Figure 3 in the paper illustrates this nicely.
Also illustrated in the above-linked Figure 3 is oral microbiome composition. In other words (and to oversimplify it rather), how good or bad our mouth bacteria are for us, independent of diversity (so for example, are there more of this or that kind of bacteria).
Once again, there is a gradient, only this time, the ends of it are even more polarized: foragers have a diverse oral microbiome rich with healthy-for-humans bacteria, while people with an American industrialized lifestyle might not have the diversity, but do have a large number of bad-for-humans bacteria.
While many lifestyle factors are dietary or quasi-dietary, e.g. what kinds of foods people eat, whether they drink alcohol, whether they smoke or use gum, etc, many lifestyle factors were examined, including everything from medications and exercise, to things like kitchen location and what fuel is predominantly used, to education and sexual activity and many other things that we don’t have room for here.
You can see how each lifestyle factor stacked up, in Figure 5.
Why it matters
Our oral microbiome affects many aspects of health, including:
- Locally: caries, periodontal diseases, mucosal diseases, oral cancer, and more
- Systemically: gastrointestinal diseases in general, IBS in particular, nervous system diseases, Alzheimer’s disease, endocrine diseases, all manner of immune/autoimmune diseases, and more
Nor are the effects it has mild; oral microbiome health can be a huge factor, statistically, for many of the above. You can see information and data pertaining to all of the above and more, here:
Oral microbiomes: more and more importance in oral cavity and whole body
What to do about it
Take care of your oral microbiome, to help it to take care of you. As well as the above-mentioned lifestyle factors, it’s worth noting that when it comes to oral hygiene, not all oral hygiene products are created equal:
Toothpastes & Mouthwashes: Which Kinds Help, And Which Kinds Harm?
Additionally, you might want to consider gentler options, but if you do, take care to opt for things that science actually backs., rather than things that merely trended on social media.
This writer (hi, it’s me) is particularly excited about the science and use of the miswak stick, which comes from the Saladora persica tree, and has phytochemical properties that (amongst many other health-giving effects) improve the quality of saliva (i.e., improve its pH and microbiome composition). In essence, your own saliva gets biochemically nudged into being the safest, most effective mouthwash.
There’s a lot of science for the use of S. persica, and we’ve discussed it before in more detail than we have room to rehash today, here:
Less Common Oral Hygiene Options
If you’d like to enjoy these benefits (and also have the equivalent of a toothbrush that you can carry with you at all times and does not require water*), then here’s an example product on Amazon 😎
*don’t worry, it won’t feel like dry-brushing your teeth. Remember what we said about what it does to your saliva. Basically, you chomp it once, and your saliva a) increases and b) becomes biological tooth-cleaning fluid. The stick itself is fibrous, so the end of it frays in a way that makes a natural little brush. Each stick is about 5”×¼” and you can carry it in a little carrying case (you’ll get a couple with each pack of miswak sticks), so you can easily use it in, say, the restroom of a restaurant or before your appointment somewhere, just as easily as you could use a toothpick, but with much better results. You may be wondering how long a stick lasts; well, that depends on how much you use it, but in this writer’s experience, each stick lasts about a month maybe, using it at least 2–3 times per day, probably rather more since I use it after each meal/snack and upon awakening.
(the above may read like an ad, but we promise you it’s not sponsored and this writer’s just enthusiastic, and when you read the science, you will be too)
Enjoy!
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Why Going Gluten-Free Could Be A Bad Idea
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Is A Gluten-Free Diet Right For You?
This is Rachel Begun, MS, RD. She’s a nutritionist who, since her own diagnosis with Celiac disease, has shifted her career into a position of educating the public (and correcting misconceptions) about gluten sensitivity, wheat allergy, and Celiac disease. In short, the whole “gluten-free” field.
First, a quick recap
We’ve written on this topic ourselves before; here’s what we had to say:
On “Everyone should go gluten-free”
Some people who have gone gluten-free are very evangelical about the lifestyle change, and will advise everyone that it will make them lose weight, have clearer skin, more energy, and sing well, too. Ok, maybe not the last one, but you get the idea—a dietary change gets seen as a cure-all.
And for some people, it can indeed make a huge difference!
Begun urges us to have a dose of level-headedness in our approach, though.
Specifically, she advises:
- Don’t ignore symptoms, and/but…
- Don’t self-diagnose
- Don’t just quit gluten
One problem with self-diagnosis is that we can easily be wrong:
But why is that a problem? Surely there’s not a health risk in skipping the gluten just to be on the safe side? As it turns out, there actually is:
If we self-diagnose incorrectly, Begun points out, we can miss the actual cause of the symptoms, and by cheerfully proclaiming “I’m allergic to gluten” or such, a case of endometriosis, or Hashimoto’s, or something else entirely, might go undiagnosed and thus untreated.
“Oh, I feel terrible today, there must have been some cross-contamination in my food” when in fact, it’s an undiagnosed lupus flare-up, that kind of thing.
Similarly, just quitting gluten “to be on the safe side” can mask a different problem, if wheat consumption (for example) contributed to, but did not cause, some ailment.
In other words: it could reduce your undesired symptoms, but in so doing, leave a more serious problem unknown.
Instead…
If you suspect you might have a gluten sensitivity, a wheat allergy, or even Celiac disease, get yourself tested, and take professional advice on proceeding from there.
How? Your physician should be able to order the tests for you.
You can also check out resources available here:
Celiac Disease Foundation | How do I get tested?
Or for at-home gluten intolerance tests, here are some options weighed against each other:
MNT | 5 gluten intolerance tests and considerations
Want to learn more?
Begun has a blog:
Rachel Begun | More than just recipes
(it is, in fact, just recipes—but they are very simple ones!)
You also might enjoy this interview, in which she talks about gluten sensitivity, celiac disease, and bio-individuality:
Want to watch it, but not right now? Bookmark it for later
Take care!
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Savory Protein Crêpe
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.
Pancakes have a bad reputation healthwise, but they don’t have to be so. Here’s a very healthy crêpe recipe, with around 20g of protein per serving (which is about how much protein most people’s body’s can use at one sitting) and a healthy dose of fiber too:
You will need
Per crêpe:
- ½ cup milk (your preference what kind; we recommend oat milk for this)
- 2 oz chickpea flour (also called garbanzo bean flour, or gram flour)
- 1 tsp nutritional yeast
- 1 tsp ras el-hanout (optional but tasty and contains an array of beneficial phytochemicals)
- 1 tsp dried mixed herbs
- ⅛ tsp MSG or ¼ tsp low-sodium salt
For the filling (also per crêpe):
- 6 cherry tomatoes, halved
- Small handful baby spinach
- Extra virgin olive oil
Method
(we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)
1) Mix the dry crêpe ingredients in a bowl, and then stir in the milk, whisking to mix thoroughly. Leave to stand for at least 5 minutes.
2) Meanwhile, heat a little olive oil in a skillet, add the tomatoes and fry for 1 minute, before adding the spinach, stirring, and turning off the heat. As soon as the spinach begins to wilt, set it aside.
3) Heat a little olive oil either in the same skillet (having been carefully wiped clean) or a crêpe pan if you have one, and pour in a little of the batter you made, tipping the pan so that it coats the pan evenly and thinly. Once the top is set, jiggle the pan to see that it’s not stuck, and then flip your crêpe to finish on the other side.
If you’re not confident of your pancake-tossing skills, or your pan isn’t good enough quality to permit this, you can slide it out onto a heatproof chopping board, and use that to carefully turn it back into the pan to finish the other side.
4) Add the filling to one half of the crêpe, and fold it over, pushing down at the edges with a spatula to make a seal, cooking for another 30 seconds or so. Alternatively, you can just serve a stack of crêpes and add the filling at the table, folding or rolling per personal preference:
Enjoy!
Want to learn more?
For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:
- Level-Up Your Fiber Intake! (Without Difficulty Or Discomfort)
- Three Daily Servings of Beans?
- Lycopene’s Benefits For The Gut, Heart, Brain, & More
- Our Top 5 Spices: How Much Is Enough For Benefits?
- Sea Salt vs MSG – Which is Healthier?
Take care!
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The Truth About Vaccines
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The Truth About Vaccines
Yesterday we asked your views on vaccines, and we got an interesting spread of answers. Of those who responded to the poll, most were in favour of vaccines. We got quite a lot of comments this time too; we can’t feature them all, but we’ll include extracts from a few in our article today, as they raised interesting points!
Vaccines contain dangerous ingredients that will harm us more than the disease would: True or False?
False, contextually.
Many people are very understandably wary of things they know full well to be toxic, being injected into them.
One subscriber who voted for “Vaccines are poison, and/or are some manner of conspiracy ” wrote:
❝I think vaccines from 50–60 years ago are true vaccines and were safer than vaccines today. I have not had a vaccine for many, many years, and I never plan to have any kind of vaccine/shot again.❞
They didn’t say why they personally felt this way, but the notion that “things were simpler back in the day” is a common (and often correct!) observation regards health, especially when it comes to unwanted additives and ultraprocessing of food.
Things like aluminum or mercury in vaccines are much like sodium and chlorine in table salt. Sodium and chlorine are indeed both toxic to us. But in the form of sodium chloride, it’s a normal part of our diet, provided we don’t overdo it.
Additionally, the amount of unwanted metals (e.g. aluminum, mercury) in vaccines is orders of magnitude smaller than the amount in dietary sources—even if you’re a baby and your “dietary sources” are breast milk and/or formula milk.
In the case of formaldehyde (an inactivating agent), it’s also the dose that makes the poison (and the quantity in vaccines is truly miniscule).
This academic paper alone cites more sources than we could here without making today’s newsletter longer than it already is:
Vaccine Safety: Myths and Misinformation
I have a perfectly good immune system, it can handle the disease: True or False?
True! Contingently.
In fact, our immune system is so good at defending against disease, that the best thing we can do to protect ourselves is show our immune system a dead or deactivated version of a pathogen, so that when the real pathogen comes along, our immune system knows exactly what it is and what to do about it.
In other words, a vaccine.
One subscriber who voted for “Vaccines are important but in some cases the side effects can be worse ” wrote:
❝In some ways I’m vacd out. I got COVid a few months ago and had no symptoms except a cough. I have asthma and it didn’t trigger a lot of congestion. No issues. I am fully vaccinated but not sure I’ll get one in fall.❞
We’re glad this subscriber didn’t get too ill! A testimony to their robust immune system doing what it’s supposed to, after being shown a recent-ish edition of the pathogen, in deactivated form.
It’s very reasonable to start wondering: “surely I’m vaccinated enough by now”
And, hopefully, you are! But, as any given pathogen mutates over time, we eventually need to show our immune system what the new version looks like, or else it won’t recognize it.
See also: Why Experts Think You’ll Need a COVID-19 Booster Shot in the Future
So why don’t we need booster shots for everything? Often, it’s because a pathogen has stopped mutating at any meaningful rate. Polio is an example of this—no booster is needed for most people in most places.
Others, like flu, require annual boosters to keep up with the pathogens.
Herd immunity will keep us safe: True or False?
True! Ish.
But it doesn’t mean what a lot of people think it means. For example, in the UK, “herd immunity” was the strategy promoted by Prime Minister of the hour, Boris Johnson. But he misunderstood what it meant:
- What he thought it meant: everyone gets the disease, then everyone who doesn’t die is now immune
- What it actually means: if most people are immune to the disease (for example: due to having been vaccinated), it can’t easily get to the people who aren’t immune
One subscriber who voted for “Vaccines are critical for our health; vax to the max! ” wrote:
❝I had a chiropractor a few years ago, who explained to me that if the general public took vaccines, then she would not have to vaccinate her children and take a risk of having side effects❞
Obviously, we can’t speak for this subscriber’s chiropractor’s children, but this raises a good example: some people can’t safely have a given vaccine, due to underlying medical conditions—or perhaps it is not available to them, for example if they are under a certain age.
In such cases, herd immunity—other people around having been vaccinated and thus not passing on the disease—is what will keep them safe.
Here’s a useful guide from the US Dept of Health and Human Services:
How does community immunity (a.k.a. herd immunity) work?
And, for those who are more visually inclined, here’s a graphical representation of a mathematical model of how herd immunity works (you can run a simulation)!
Stay safe!
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Sciatica Exercises & Home Treatment – by Dr. George Best
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Dr. Best is a doctor of chiropractic, but his work here is compelling. He starts by giving an overview of the relevant anatomy, and then the assorted possible causes of sciatica, before moving on to the treatments.
As is generally the case for chiropractic, nothing here will be “cured”, but it will give methods for ongoing management to keep you pain-free—which in the case of sciatica, is usually the single biggest thing that most people suffering from it most dearly want.
We get to read a lot about self-massage and exercises, of the (very well-evidenced; about the most well-evidenced thing there is for back pain) McKenzie technique exercises, as well as assorted acupressure-based techniques that are less well-evidenced but have good anecdotal support.
He also writes about preventing sciatica—which if you already have it, that doesn’t mean it’s too late; it just means, in that case do these things (along with the aforementioned exercises) to gradually reverse the harm done and get back to where you were pre-sciatica.
Lastly, he does also speak on when signs might point to your problems being beyond the scope of this book, and seeking professional examination if you haven’t already.
The style throughout is straight to the point, informative, and instructional. There is zero fluff or padding, and no sensationalization. There are diagrams and illustrative photos where appropriate.
Bottom line: if you have, or fear the threat of, sciatica, then this is an excellent book to have and use its exercises.
Click here to check out Sciatica Exercises & Home Treatment, and live pain-free!
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