How to live a long and healthy life, according to the ancients
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Just like in the modern world, people in ancient times wanted to know how to live a long and healthy life.
Greeks and Romans heard fantastic tales of far-away peoples living to well beyond 100.
Greek essayist Lucian (about 120–180 CE) writes:
Indeed, there are even whole nations that are very long-lived, like the Seres [Chinese], who are said to live 300 years: some attribute their old age to the climate, others to the soil and still others to their diet, for they say that this entire nation drinks nothing but water. The people of Athos are also said to live 130 years, and it is reported that the Chaldeans live more than 100, using barley bread to preserve the sharpness of their eyesight.
This is how they thought this could happen.
Whatever the truth of these tales, many ancient Greeks and Romans wanted a long and healthy life.
An ancient doctor’s perspective
Ancient doctors were interested in what people who lived long lives were doing every day and how this might have helped.
The Greek physician Galen (129–216 CE), for example, discusses two people he knew personally in Rome who lived to old age.
First, there is a grammarian (someone who studies and teaches grammar) called Telephus, who lived to almost 100.
According to Galen, Telephus ate just three times a day. His diet was simple:
gruel boiled in water mixed with raw honey of the best quality, and this alone was enough for him at the first meal. He also dined at the seventh hour or a little sooner, taking vegetables first and next tasting fish or birds. In the evening, he used to eat only bread, moistened in wine that had been mixed.
Galen also tells us Telephus had some bathing habits that might seem unusual to us today. Telephus preferred to be massaged with olive oil every day and only have a bath a few times a month:
He was in the habit of bathing twice a month in winter and four times a month in summer. In the seasons between these, he bathed three times a month. On the days he didn’t bathe, he was anointed around the third hour with a brief massage.
Second, there was an old doctor named Antiochus, who lived into his 80s.
According to Galen, Antiochus also had a simple diet.
In the morning, Antiochus usually ate toasted bread with honey. Then, at lunch, he would eat fish, but usually only fish “from around the rocks and those from the deep sea”. For dinner, he would eat “either gruel with oxymel [a mix of vinegar and honey] or a bird with a simple sauce”.
Alongside this simple diet, Antiochus went for a walk every morning. He also liked to be driven in a chariot, or had his slaves carry him in a chair around the city.
Galen also said Antiochus “performed the exercises suitable for an old man”:
There is one thing you should do for old people in the early morning as an exercise: after massage with oil, next get them to walk about and carry out passive exercises without becoming fatigued, taking into account the capacity of the old person.
Galen concludes that Antiochus’ routine probably contributed to his good health well into advanced age:
Looking after himself in old age in this way, Antiochus continued on until the very end, unimpaired in his senses and sound in all his limbs.
Galen stresses that Telephus and Antiochus had some obvious things in common. They ate just a few times a day; their diet was of wild meats, whole grains, bread and honey; and they kept active every day.
What can you do?
Not all of us can live to 100 or more, as the Greeks and Romans were well aware.
However, Lucian offers us some consolation in his essay On Octogenarians:
On every soil and in every climate people who observe the proper exercise and the diet most suitable for health have been long-lived.
Lucian advised that we should imitate the lifestyles of people who have lived long and healthy lives if we want to do the same.
So, if you lived in Rome in the 2nd century CE, people like Telephus and Antiochus, who had a simple diet and kept active all their lives, would be good role models.
Konstantine Panegyres, Lecturer in Classics and Ancient History, The University of Western Australia
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Watch Out For Furanocoumarins!
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This class of organic compounds can affect many different medications, in some cases stopping them from working, and in some cases causing you to overdose.
It’s naturally occurring, and found in certain fruit.
Agent of chaos
The fact that furanocoumarins can have very different (often opposite) effects on different drugs, makes it a lot harder to predict in its behavior than, for example, alcohol.
In particular, we’ve talked before about the very high furanocoumarin content of grapefruit (including: grapefruit juice), which has come up sometimes in our This or That section.
For example:
❝Another thing to bear in mind is that grapefruit contains furanocoumarin, which can inhibit cytochrome P-450 3A4 isoenzyme and P-glycoptrotein transporters in the intestine and liver—slowing down their drug metabolism capabilities, thus effectively increasing the bioavailability of many drugs manifold.
This may sound superficially like a good thing (improving bioavailability of things we want), but in practice it means that in the case of many drugs, if you take them with (or near in time to) grapefruit or grapefruit juice, then congratulations, you just took an overdose.
This happens with a lot of meds for blood pressure, cholesterol (including statins), calcium channel-blockers, anti-depressants, benzo-family drugs, beta-blockers, and more. Oh, and Viagra, too. Which latter might sound funny, but remember, Viagra’s mechanism of action is blood pressure modulation, and that is not something you want to mess around with unduly.
So, do check with your pharmacist to know if you’re on any meds that would be affected by grapefruit or grapefruit juice!
PS: the same substance is quite available in pummelos and sour oranges (but not meaningfully in sweet oranges); you can see a chart here showing the relative furanocoumarin contents of many citrus fruits, or lack thereof as the case may be, as it is for lemons and most limes).❞
Other drugs, however, will be decreased in their effects.
For example, for antihistamines like fexofenadine, grapefruit juice inhibits transport proteins that help absorb the drug, reducing its effectiveness
Here’s a cheatsheet
Caveat: this is a non-exhaustive list!
Medicines whose effects can INCREASE Medicines whose effects can DECREASE Cholesterol-lowering statins: simvastatin, lovastatin, atorvastatin (higher risk of muscle pain or damage) Antihistamines: e.g: fexofenadine (less effective) Blood pressure-lowering drugs: felodipine, nifedipine, nicardipine, nisoldipine, amlodipine, verapamil Blood pressure meds: e.g: aliskiren (levels drop sharply, making it less effective) Anti-anxiety and sleep medicines: midazolam, triazolam, alprazolam, diazepam, clonazepam Beta-blockers: celiprolol, talinolol, acebutolol (weaker heart-rate control) Erectile-dysfunction drugs: sildenafil, tadalafil, vardenafil Chemotherapy: e.g: etoposide (reduced absorption, which lowers effectiveness) Heart-rhythm drugs: amiodarone, dronedarone, quinidine, disopyramide, propafenone (increased risk of irregular heartbeat or toxicity) Thyroid medicine: levothyroxine (delayed absorption, usually not a huge problem) Immune-suppressing drugs: cyclosporine, tacrolimus, sirolimus Mental-health medicines: buspirone, quetiapine, sertraline (increased side effects) Pain medicines: oxycodone, methadone (overdose risk) Source: Expanded List Of Medications That Interact With Grapefruit ← as you can see, we had to clip the “increase” list for brevity; we kept it short by a) grouping them the way we did b) prioritizing the medications that are most common and whose interactions have the strongest adverse effect
Important note on timing
Of the many ways these interactions can occur, the two most common are:
- Blocking the enzyme (CYP3A4) in the gut that normally helps break down many drugs—this causes increases in drug levels.
- Blocking the transporter protein (OATP1A2) that helps the body absorb other medicines—this causes decreases in drug levels.
The enzyme-blocking effect can last up to 3 days, so skipping grapefruit for only a few hours won’t help! You need to avoid it entirely.
See: Drug-grapefruit juice interactions: two mechanisms are clear but individual responses vary
For medicines affected by OATP inhibition (like fexofenadine), leaving a 4-hour gap usually* avoids the problem.
See: Fruit juice inhibition of uptake transport: a new type of food–drug interaction
*Not a guarantee, because individuals’ physiology can and sometimes will vary.
Want to learn more?
That’s all we have room to say about furanocoumarins for now, but let’s quickly mention a very common (and very affective!) herbal supplement that has almost as many medication interactions as grapefruit does (albeit, for completely different reasons, many of which mechanisms of action are not yet fully understood):
St. John’s wort can weaken the effects of many medicines, including crucially important medicines such as:
- Antidepressants
- Birth control pills
- Cyclosporine, which prevents the body from rejecting transplanted organs
- Some heart medications, including digoxin and ivabradine
- Some HIV drugs, including indinavir and nevirapine
- Some cancer medications, including irinotecan and imatinib
- Warfarin, an anticoagulant (blood thinner)
- Certain statins, including simvastatin
And for our main article on St. John’s Wort, check out:
Flower Power: St. John’s Wort’s Drug-Level Effectiveness (The Herbal Supplement That Rivals Prozac)
Take care!
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Lychee vs Plum – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing lychee to plum, we picked the lychee.
Why?
It was close!
In terms of macros, the numbers are all close enough to be a tie (carbs and protein slightly in lychees’ favor; fiber even more marginally in plums’ favor, but we’re talking literally 0.1g/100g difference). Which, fair enough, we picked fruits with a similar consistency, so that’s not too shocking that this category is a tie.
In the category of vitamins, lychees have more of vitamins B2, B3, B6, B7, B9, C, and choline, while plums have more of vitamins A, B1, E, and K. By the numbers, that’s a win for lychees, though that vitamin K is 16x more in plums, so that’s still worth noting.
When it comes to minerals, lychees have more copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, and selenium, while plums have more calcium and zinc. Another win for lychees.
Adding up the sections makes for an overall win for lychees, but by all means enjoy either or both (especially as plums have some extra anticancer potential, linked below); diversity is good!
Want to learn more?
You might like:
Top 8 Fruits That Prevent & Kill Cancer
Enjoy!
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Chard vs Red Cabbage – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing chard to red cabbage, we picked the chard.
Why?
Often thought of as containing nothing much of anything much, the leafy greens come out on top:
In terms of macros, red cabbage has 2x the carbs, for approximately the same fiber and protein. This could be a win either way or a tie depending on how you feel about the carbs; given that the actual carb amounts involved are tiny, however, we’re calling this round a tie.
In the category of vitamins, chard has a lot more of vitamins A, B2, B5, E, and K, while red cabbage has slightly more of vitamins B1, B6, and B9, yielding a compelling 5:3 win to chard.
Looking at minerals, chard has more calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, and zinc, while red cabbage is not higher in any minerals—a complete win for chard in this round.
In other considerations, chard has a lot more polyphenols, so that’s one more point in its favor.
Adding up the sections makes a clear overall win for chard, but by all means enjoy either or both, as diversity is good!
Want to learn more?
You might like:
21 Most Beneficial Polyphenols & What Foods Have Them
Enjoy!
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Life After Death? (Your Life; A Loved One’s Death)
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The Show Must Go On
We’ve previously written about the topics of death and dying. It’s not cheery, but it is important to tackle.
Sooner is better than later, in the case of:
Preparations For Managing Your Own Mortality
And for those who are left behind, of course it is hardest of all:
What Grief Does To Your Body (And How To Manage It)
But what about what comes next? For those who are left behind, that is.
Life goes on
In cases when the death is that of a close loved one, the early days after death can seem like a surreal blur. How can the world go ticking on as normal when [loved one] is dead?
But incontrovertibly, it does, so we can only ask again: how?
And, we get to choose that, to a degree. The above-linked article about grief gives a “101” rundown, but it’s (by necessity, for space) a scant preparation for one of the biggest challenges in life that most of us will ever face.
For many people, processing grief involves a kind of “saying goodbye”. For others, it doesn’t, as in the following cases of grieving the loss of one’s child—something no parent should ever have to face, but it happens:
Dr. Ken Druck | The Love That Never Dies
(with warning, the above article is a little heavy)
In short: for those who choose not to “say goodbye” in the case of the death of a loved one, it’s more often not a case of cold neglect, but rather the opposite—a holding on. Not in the “denial” sense of holding on, but rather in the sense of “I am not letting go of this feeling of love, no matter how much it might hurt to hold onto; it’s all I have”.
What about widows, and love after death?
Note: we’ll use the feminine “widow” here as a) it’s the most common and b) most scientific literature focuses on widows, but there is no reason why most of the same things won’t also apply to widowers.
We say “most”, as society does tend to treat widows and widowers differently, having different expectations about a respectful mourning period, one’s comportment during same, and so on.
As an aside: most scientific literature also assumes heterosexuality, which is again statistically reasonable, and for the mostpart the main difference is any extra challenges presented by non-recognition of marriages, and/or homophobic in-laws. But otherwise, grief is grief, and as the saying goes, love is love.
One last specificity before we get into the meat of this: we are generally assuming marriages to be monogamous here. Polyamorous arrangements will likely sidestep most of these issues completely, but again, they’re not the norm.
Firstly, there’s a big difference between remarrying (or similar) after being widowed, and remarrying (or similar) after a divorce, and that largely lies in the difference of how they begin. A divorce is (however stressful it may often be) more often seen as a transition into a new period of freedom, whereas bereavement is almost always felt as a terrible loss.
The science, by the way, shows the stats for this; people are less likely to remarry, and slower to remarry if they do, in instances of bereavement rather than divorce, for example:
Timing of Remarriage Among Divorced and Widowed Parents
Love after death: the options
For widows, then, there seem to be multiple options:
- Hold on to the feelings for one’s deceased partner; never remarry
- Grieve, move on, find new love, relegating the old to history
- Try to balance the two (this is tricky but can be done*)
*Why is balancing the two tricky, and how can it be done?
It’s tricky because ultimately there are three people’s wishes at hand:
- The deceased (“they would want me to be happy” vs “I feel I would be betraying them”—which two feelings can also absolutely come together, by the way)
- Yourself (whether you actually want to get a new partner, or just remain single—this is your 100% your choice either way, and your decision should be made consciously)
- The new love (how comfortable are they with your continued feelings for your late love, really?)
And obviously only two of the above can be polled for opinions, and the latter one might say what they think we want to hear, only to secretly and/or later resent it.
One piece of solid advice for the happily married: talk with your partner now about how you each would feel about the other potentially remarrying in the event of your death. Do they have your pre-emptive blessing to do whatever, do you ask a respectable mourning period first (how long?), would the thought just plain make you jealous? Be honest, and bid your partner be honest too.
One piece of solid advice for everyone: make sure you, and your partner(s), as applicable, have a good emotional safety net, if you can. Close friends or family members that you genuinely completely trust to be there through thick and thin, to hold your/their hand through the emotional wreck that will likely follow.
Because, while depression and social loneliness are expected and looked out for, it’s emotional loneliness that actually hits the hardest, for most people:
Longitudinal Examination of Emotional Functioning in Older Adults After Spousal Bereavement
…which means that having even just one close friend or family member with whom one can be at one’s absolute worst, express emotions without censure, not have to put on the socially expected appearance of emotional stability… Having that one person (ideally more, but having at least one is critical) can make a huge difference.
But what if a person has nobody?
That’s definitely a hard place to be, but here’s a good starting point:
How To Beat Loneliness & Isolation
Take care!
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The Food Additive You Do Want
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.
Q: When Is A Fiber Not A Fiber?
A: when it’s a resistant starch. What’s it resistant to? Digestion. So, it functions as though a fiber, and by some systems, may get classified as such.
It’s a little like how sucralose is technically a sugar, but the body processes it like a fiber (but beware, because the sweetness of this disaccharide alone can trigger an insulin response anyway—dose dependent)
There may be other problems too:
But today’s not about sucralose, it’s about…
Guar gum’s surprising dietary role
You may have noticed “guar gum” on the list of ingredients of all kinds of things from baked goods to dairy products to condiments to confectionary and more.
It’s also used in cosmetics and explosives, but let’s not focus on that.
It’s used in food products as…
- a bulking agent
- a thickener
- a stabilizer
Our attention was caught by a new study, that found:
Resistant starch intake facilitates weight loss in humans by reshaping the gut microbiota
Often people think of “fiber helps weight loss” as “well yes, if you are bulking out your food with sawdust, you will eat less”, but it’s not that.
There’s an actual physiological process going on here!
We can’t digest it, but our gut microbiota can and will ferment it. See also:
Fiber against pounds: Resistant starch found to support weight loss
Beyond weight loss
Not everyone wants to lose weight, and even where weight loss is a goal, it’s usually not the only goal. As it turns out, adding guar gum into our diet does more things too:
Resistant starch supplement found to reduce liver triglycerides in people with fatty liver disease
(specifically, this was about NAFLD, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease)
Digging a little, it seems the benefits don’t stop there either:
Diet high in guar gum fiber limits inflammation and delays multiple sclerosis symptoms
(this one was a rodent study, but still, it’s promising and it’s consistent with what one would expect based on what else we know about its function in diet)
Should we just eat foods with guar gum in as an additive?
That depends on what they are, but watch out for the other additives if you do!
You can just buy guar gum by itself, by the way (here’s an example product on Amazon).
It’s doubtlessly no fun to take as a supplement (we haven’t tried this one), but it can be baked into bread, if baking’s your thing, or just used as a thickener in recipes where ordinarily you might use cornstarch or something else.
Can I get similar benefits from other foods?
The relevant quality is also present in resistant starches in general, so you might want to check out these foods, for example:
9 Foods That Are High in Resistant Starch
You can also check out ways to increase your fiber intake in general:
Level-Up Your Fiber Intake! (Without Difficulty Or Discomfort)
Enjoy!
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GLP-1 Drugs As Mood-Brighteners?
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We first wrote about GLP-1 receptor agonists (i.e. semaglutide drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy) a couple of years ago when popularity was just beginning to take off:
However, as we at that time had room only to touch briefly on the side effects and what happens when you stop taking it, you might also want to check out:
What happens when I stop taking a drug like Ozempic or Mounjaro?
…and:
Body & brain
A lot of mental health disorders, and/or the medications for them, can affect body weight (in most cases: increasing it, the eating disorders usually do the opposite, unhealthily).
In the case of antidepressants, we talked about this here: How Much Weight Gain Do Antidepressants Cause?
…but there are other contenders that are less common (but still very common in the grand scheme of things), such many antipsychotics and mood stabilizers; in both of those cases the most widely-prescribed drugs have weight gain as a side effect.
So, a large (n=25,677) research review was conducted by Dr. Sigrid Breit & Dr. Daniela Hubl, looking into the safety and efficacy of GLP-1 RAs in patients with (and without) those conditions and/or medications.
In nutshell: they found that as well as being safe and effective for weight loss, they had mood-improving effects too.
Some take-aways from their research (if, for brevity, we skip over the metabolic benefits, weight loss, etc, which are all well-established):
- Five different studies showed mental health improvements in people with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or major depression.
- No increased risk of suicidal ideation or behavior was found with GLP-1 RAs in people with or without mental illness*.
*in contrast, see: How Serious Are Antidepressant Side Effects?, in which we discuss the potential for (uncommon, but it happens sometimes) paradoxical increase in suicidality upon taking antidepressants
You may be thinking: “That’s all great, but I don’t have a mental illness”
If so, then… Congratulations! And also: there are benefits regardless: GLP-1 RAs also improved mood and emotional well-being in people without mental illness, while outperforming insulin and other diabetic drugs.
As to how it works for mental health, there’s a lot that’s not yet known, but:
❝GLP-1 RAs may have antidepressant and anti-anxiety effects, potentially due to their anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidative properties, which can also help reduce neuroinflammation.❞
~ Dr. Sigrid Breit
See also: The Inflamed Mind: A Radical New Approach To Depression – by Dr. Edward Bullmore, for how that works
As for the research we’ve been writing about today, you can read the paper in full, here:
Want a natural method instead?
For general GLP-1RA effects:
It is possible to get many of the effects of GLP-1 RAs without taking GLP-1 RAs, by enjoying foods that increase incretin, a hormone group (the most well-known of which is GLP-1) that slows down stomach emptying, which means a gentler blood sugar curve and feeling fuller for longer. It also acts on the hypothalamus, controlling appetite via the brain too (signalling fullness and reducing hunger).
For what foods to focus on, see: 5 Ways To Naturally Boost The “Ozempic Effect” ← this is from Dr. Jason Fung, who is perhaps most well-known for his work in functional medicine for reversing diabetes, and he’s once again giving us sound advice about metabolic hormone-hacking with dietary tweaks!
However! If you (correctly) think that there’s a lot we don’t know about how GLP-1 RAs affect (or indeed, effect) weight loss and satiety, it’s nothing compared to what we don’t know about how GLP-1 RAs improve mood, which is, well, as you saw, researchers are guessing, so far. Which is how science should be! Because those guesses can be formulated into hypotheses that can be tested and then either furthered (if the results supported the hypothesis) or changed (if the results didn’t support the hypothesis). But guesses aren’t always where we want to be at when it comes to our personal health, so here are some more evidence-based approaches:
- Antidepressants: Personalization Is Key! ← Ok, so this one’s not “natural”, but it’s worth mentioning, as understanding this can avoid a lot of disappointment with the wrong antidepressants
- 12 Foods That Fight Depression & Anxiety
- Behavioral Activation Against Depression & Anxiety
Take care!
Don’t Forget…
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