Is cold water bad for you? The facts behind 5 water myths
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We know the importance of staying hydrated, especially in hot weather. But even for something as simple as a drink of water, conflicting advice and urban myths abound.
Is cold water really bad for your health? What about hot water from the tap? And what is “raw water”? Let’s dive in and find out.
Myth 1: Cold water is bad for you
Some recent TikToks have suggested cold water causes health problems by somehow “contracting blood vessels” and “restricting digestion”. There is little evidence for this.
While a 2001 study found 51 out of 669 women tested (7.6%) got a headache after drinking cold water, most of them already suffered from migraines and the work hasn’t been repeated since.
Cold drinks were shown to cause discomfort in people with achalasia (a rare swallowing disorder) in 2012 but the study only had 12 participants.
For most people, the temperature you drink your water is down to personal preference and circumstances. Cold water after exercise in summer or hot water to relax in winter won’t make any difference to your overall health.
Myth 2: You shouldn’t drink hot tap water
This belief has a grain of scientific truth behind it. Hot water is generally a better solvent than cold water, so may dissolve metals and minerals from pipes better. Hot water is also often stored in tanks and may be heated and cooled many times. Bacteria and other disease-causing microorganisms tend to grow better in warm water and can build up over time.
It’s better to fill your cup from the cold tap and get hot water for drinks from the kettle.
Myth 3: Bottled water is better
While bottled water might be safer in certain parts of the world due to pollution of source water, there is no real advantage to drinking bottled water in Australia and similar countries.
According to University of Queensland researchers, bottled water is not safer than tap water. It may even be tap water. Most people can’t tell the difference either. Bottled water usually costs (substantially) more than turning on the tap and is worse for the environment.
What about lead in tap water? This problem hit the headlines after a public health emergency in Flint, Michigan, in the United States. But Flint used lead pipes with a corrosion inhibitor (in this case orthophosphate) to keep lead from dissolving. Then the city switched water sources to one without a corrosion inhibitor. Lead levels rose and a public emergency was declared.
Fortunately, lead pipes haven’t been used in Australia since the 1930s. While lead might be present in some old plumbing products, it is unlikely to cause problems.
Myth 4: Raw water is naturally healthier
Some people bypass bottled and tap water, going straight to the source.
The “raw water” trend emerged a few years ago, encouraging people to drink from rivers, streams and lakes. There is even a website to help you find a local source.
Supporters say our ancestors drank spring water, so we should, too. However, our ancestors also often died from dysentery and cholera and their life expectancy was low.
While it is true even highly treated drinking water can contain low levels of things like microplastics, unless you live somewhere very remote, the risks of drinking untreated water are far higher as it is more likely to contain pollutants from the surrounding area.
Myth 5: It’s OK to drink directly from hoses
Tempting as it may be, it’s probably best not to drink from the hose when watering the plants. Water might have sat in there, in the warm sun for weeks or more potentially leading to bacterial buildup.
Similarly, while drinking water fountains are generally perfectly safe to use, they can contain a variety of bacteria. It’s useful (though not essential) to run them for a few seconds before you start to drink so as to get fresh water through the system rather than what might have been sat there for a while.
We are fortunate to be able to take safe drinking water for granted. Billions of people around the world are not so lucky.
So whether you like it hot or cold, or somewhere in between, feel free to enjoy a glass of water this summer.
Just don’t drink it from the hose.
Oliver A.H. Jones, Professor of chemistry, RMIT University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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A Very Cheap Way To Slow Biological Aging
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“Multivitamins and minerals are good for longevity” is an interesting one as a topic, because:
- On the one hand, that is already popularly assumed
- On the other hand, multivitamins and minerals are equally popularly much-derided as a waste of money
And indeed, they have their limitations, and yes, it’s still better to get everything from one’s diet.
Warning: do not, however, fall into the trap that many do, and think “I don’t need to take supplements because it’s better to get it from my diet” and then not, in fact, get a full coverage from your diet
So, for whatever reason you might choose to take a multivitamin and mineral, let’s take a look at…
Cause and effect
Researchers (Dr. Sidong Li et al.) found that taking a daily multivitamin for two years slowed biological aging by the equivalent of about four months.
So, that’s basically as if every time you went forwards 6 years, you went back 1 year.
Compared to what, you ask?
Good question, because if it’s “compared to not taking it”, and if it’s an observational study, then there can be all kinds of confounding factors, most of them rooted in the theme “people who do thing 1 for their health are more likely to also do things 2, 3, 4, and 5 for their health”.
The answer, happily, is: “compared to placebo”. It was a randomized controlled trial.
Next up, some may be wondering what “biological age” is. In fact, biological age is not one thing but quite a lot of things, each of which can age at different rates.
See for example: Age & Aging: What Can (And Can’t) We Do About It?
One of the best ways to try to boil it down to a composite figure, however, is to look at epigenetic clocks.
First let’s quickly cover the question of: what does “epigenetic” mean? In few words and put simply, epigenetics is the study of “around genetics”, i.e. the things that are not the genes themselves, but modulate how (and indeed, whether or not) genes are expressed.
In this case, Dr. Li and her team used epigenetic clocks that estimate biological age based on patterns of DNA methylation, which influence gene expression and naturally change with age. The quicker the progression of the clock, the faster the aging.
The analysis included DNA methylation data from blood samples of 958 healthy participants with an average chronological age of 70 who were randomized to receive combinations of cocoa extract, multivitamins & minerals, or placebo.
- Good news: participants taking a multivitamin enjoyed slowing across all five epigenetic aging clocks tested, with strongest effects in the two clocks most strongly linked to mortality risk.
- Bad news: the cocoa extract supplement was a bit of a flop. Didn’t help. Or rather, it had no effect whatsoever on the 5 epigenetic clocks tested.
The reason why she tested cocoa extract for this, is because of: Cocoa vs Biological Aging!
…in which Dr. Li (yes, the same Dr. Li) and her team (mostly the same team, but not entirely the same) found that daily cocoa extract reduced hsCRP (a key inflammation marker tied to heart disease) by about 8.4% per year compared with placebo, suggesting anti-inflammatory and cardio-protective effects, and also noted that this cocoa extract supplementation reduced cardiovascular mortality by 27%.
Which is relevant, because epigenetic clocks and inflammatory markers are two out of three of: The 3 Best Predictors Of How Well You’ll Age
If you’d like to read Dr. Li’s latest work, you can find it here: Effects of daily multivitamin–multimineral and cocoa extract supplementation on epigenetic aging clocks in the COSMOS randomized clinical trial ← published literally today, at time of writing this article. Never let it be said we don’t bring you cutting edge health science news!
Want to learn more?
You might like this book we reviewed a while back
Eat Your Vitamins – by Mascha Davis, RDN ← This book methodically discusses an assortment of vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients; the “other nutrients” category including amino acids (branched chain and essential), prebiotics and probiotics, and triglycerides of various kinds.
Enjoy!
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10 Ways To Balance Blood Sugars
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“Let Them Eat Cake”, She Said…
This is Jessie Inchauspé, a French biochemist and author. She’s most known for her best-selling “Glucose Revolution: The Life-Changing Power Of Balancing Your Blood Sugar”.
It’s a great book (which we reviewed recently) and you absolutely should read it, but meanwhile, we’re going to distill at least the most critical core ideas, 10almonds style. In this case, her “ten hacks”:
Eat foods in the right order
The order is:
- Fiber first
- Protein and fat second
- Starches and sugars last
What happens here is… the fiber perks up the gut bacteria, the protein and fat will then be better-digested next, and the starches and sugars will try to jump the line, but they can’t because the fiber is a physical speedbump and the proteins and fats are taking the prime place for being digested. So instead, the starches and sugars—usually responsible for blood sugar spikes—get processed much more gradually, resulting in a nice even curve.
Add a green starter to all your meals
We know what you’re thinking: “that’s just the first one again”, but no. This is an extra starter, before you get to that. If you’re the cook of the household, this can absolutely simply mean snacking on green ingredients while cooking.
Stop counting calories
Especially, she advises: stop worrying about extra calories from fats, such as if doing an oil-and-vinegar dressing for salad—which she also recommends, because all three components (the oil, the vinegar, and the salad) help even out blood sugar levels.
Flatten your breakfast curve
For many, breakfast is the starchiest meal of the day, if not the sugariest. Inchauspé recommends flipping this (ideally) or softening it (if you really must have a carb-based breakfast):
- Top choices include: a warm vegetable salad, fish, or eggs (or tofu if you don’t do animal products).
- Next-best include: if you must have toast, make sure to have butter (and/or the aforementioned egg/tofu, for example) to give your digestion an extra thing to do.
- Also: she recommends skipping the juice in favour of home-made breakfast smoothies. That way, instead of basically just sugar with some vitamins, you’re getting a range of nutrients that, if you stack it right, can constitute a balanced meal itself, with fiber + protein + fat + carbs.
Have any type of sugar—they’re all the same
They’re technically not, but the point is that your body will immediately take them apart and then they will be just the same. Whether it’s the cheapest white sugar or the most expensive organic lovingly hand-reared free-range agave nectar, your body is going to immediately give it the chop-shop treatment (a process so quick as to be practically instantaneous) and say “this is now glucose”.
Pick a dessert over a sweet snack
Remember that about the right order for foods? A dessert, when your body is already digesting dinner, is going to make much less of a glucose spike than, say, a blueberry muffin when all you’ve had this morning is coffee and juice.
Reach for the vinegar before you eat
We recently did a whole main feature about this, so we’ll not double up today!
After you eat, move
The glucose you eat will be used to replace lost muscle glycogen, before any left over is stored as fat… and, while it’s waiting to be stored as fat, just sitting in your bloodstream being high blood sugars. So, this whole thing will go a lot better if you are actively using muscle glycogen (by moving your body).
Inchauspé gives a metaphor: imagine a steam train worker, shoveling coal into the furnace. Meanwhile, other workers are bringing more coal. If the train is moving quickly, the coal can be shoveled into the furnace and burned and won’t build up so quickly. But if the train is moving slowly or not at all, that coal is just going to build up and build up, until the worker can shovel no more because of being neck-deep in coal.
Same with your blood sugars!
If you want to snack, go low-sugar
In the category of advice that will shock nobody: sugary snacks aren’t good for avoiding blood sugar spikes! This one probably didn’t need a chapter devoted to it, but anyway: low sugar is indeed the way to go for snacks.
Put some clothes on your carbs
This is about olive oil on pasta, butter on potatoes, and so forth. Basically, anything starchy is going to be broken down quickly to sugar and sent straight into the bloodstream, if there’s nothing to slow it down. If you’re wondering what to do with rice: adding a tablespoon of chia seeds to the rice while cooking (so they’re cooked together) will add very healthy fats to your rice, and (because they’ve been cooked) will not seem like eating seeds, by the way. In terms of texture and appearance, it’ll be as though you threw some black pepper in*
*which you should also do for many reasons, but that’s beyond the scope of this “about blood sugars” feature!
Wanting to know more about the science of this?
We’ve done all we have room for here today, but Inchauspé is, as ever, happy to explain it herself:
Prefer text? Check out:
The Science Behind Glucose GoddessShare This Post
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Buckwheat vs Oats – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing buckwheat to oats, we picked the oats.
Why?
First of all, for any thinking about the health concerns sometimes associated with wheat: buckwheat is not a kind of wheat, nor is it even in the same family; it’s not a grain, but a flowering plant. Buckwheat is to wheat as a lionfish is to lions.
That said, while these are both excellent foods, one of them is so good it makes the other one look bad in comparison:
In terms of macros, oats have more carbs, but also more protein and more fiber.
When it comes to vitamins, a clear winner emerges: oats have more of vitamins B1, B2, B5, B6, and B9, while buckwheat is higher in vitamin K and choline.
In the category of minerals, things are even more pronounced: oats are higher in calcium, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, and zinc. On the other hand, buckwheat is higher in selenium.
All in all: as ever, enjoy both, but if you’re picking one, oats cannot be beaten.
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
The Best Kind Of Fiber For Overall Health?
Take care!
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The 6 Pillars Of Nutritional Psychiatry
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.
Dr. Naidoo’s To-Dos
This is Dr. Uma Naidoo. She’s a Harvard-trained psychiatrist, professional chef graduating with her culinary school’s most coveted award, and a trained nutritionist. Between those three qualifications, she knows her stuff when it comes to the niche that is nutritional psychiatry.
She’s also the Director of Nutritional and Lifestyle Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) & Director of Nutritional Psychiatry at MGH Academy while serving on the faculty at Harvard Medical School.
What is nutritional psychiatry?
Nutritional psychiatry is the study of how food influences our mood (in the short term) and our more generalized mental health (in the longer term).
We recently reviewed a book of hers on this topic:
This Is Your Brain On Food – by Dr. Uma Naidoo
The “Six Pillars” of nutritional psychiatry
Per Dr. Naidoo, these are…
Be Whole; Eat Whole
Here Dr. Naidoo recommends an “80/20 rule”, and a focus on fiber, to keep the gut (“the second brain”) healthy.
See also: The Brain-Gut Highway: A Two-Way Street
Eat The Rainbow
This one’s simple enough and speaks for itself. Very many brain-nutrients happen to be pigments, and “eating the rainbow” (plants, not Skittles!) is a way to ensure getting a lot of different kinds of brain-healthy flavonoids and other phytonutrients.
The Greener, The Better
As Dr. Naidoo writes:
❝Greens contain folate, an important vitamin that maintains the function of our neurotransmitters. Its consumption has been associated with a decrease in depressive symptoms and improved cognition.❞
Tap into Your Body Intelligence
This is about mindful eating, interoception, and keeping track of how we feel 30–60 minutes after eating different foods.
Basically, the same advice here as from: The Kitchen Doctor
(do check that out, as there’s more there than we have room to repeat here today!)
Consistency & Balance Are Key
Honestly, this one’s less a separate item and is more a reiteration of the 80/20 rule discussed in the first pillar, and an emphasis on creating sustainable change rather than loading up on brain-healthy superfoods for half a weekend and then going back to one’s previous dietary habits.
Avoid Anxiety-Triggering Foods
This is about avoiding sugar/HFCS, ultra-processed foods, and industrial seed oils such as canola and similar.
As for what to go for instead, she has a broad-palette menu of ingredients she recommends using as a base for one’s meals (remember she’s a celebrated chef as well as a psychiatrist and nutritionist), which you can check out here:
Dr. Naidoo’s “Food for Mood” project
Enjoy!
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Dried Apricots vs Dried Prunes – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing dried apricots to prunes, we picked the apricots.
Why?
First, let’s talk hydration. We’ve described both of these as “dried”, but prunes are by default dried plums, usually partially rehydrated. So, for fairness, on the other side of things we’re also looking at dried apricots, partially rehydrated. Otherwise, it would look (mass for mass or volume for volume) like one is seriously outstripping the other even if some metric were actually equal, just because of water-weight in one and not the other.
Illustrative example: consider, for example, that the sugar in a big bunch of grapes or a small handful of raisins can be the same, not because they magically got more sugar by some mysterious force of transmutation, but because the water was dried out, so per mass and per volume, there’s more sugar, proportionally.
Back to dried apricots and dried prunes…
You’ll often see these two next to each other in the heath food store, which is why we’re comparing them here.
Of course, if it is practical, please by all means enjoy fresh apricots and fresh plums. But we know that life is not always convenient, fruits are not in season growing in abundance in our gardens all year round, and sometimes we’re stood in the aisle of a grocery store, weighing up the dried fruit options.
So, let’s get to it…
In terms of macros, the dried apricots have a touch more fiber while the prunes have a tiny bit more carbs, but it’s so close that most reasonably this round should be considered a tie.
In the category of vitamins, dried apricots have more of vitamins A, B3, B5, B7, B9, C, and E, while prunes have more of vitamins B1, B2, B6, and K; a clear win for apricots by strength of numbers, though it’s worth noting that the vitamin K difference is considerable (19x more vitamin K).
Looking at minerals, dried apricots have more calcium, copper, iron, potassium, and selenium, while prunes have more magnesium, manganese and zinc, yielding a 5:3 win to apricots here.
Adding up the sections makes for a clear overall win for apricots, but by all means do enjoy either or both, as diversity is best!
Want to learn more?
You might like:
Which Sugars Are Healthier, And Which Are Just The Same?
Enjoy!
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How GLP-1 Drugs Affect Gene Expression
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.
…and other items from this week’s health news:
GLP-1 receptor agonists affect more than we knew
Normally, short-lived hormonal signals trigger a quick response and then fade. Synthetic GLP-1 agonists remain in the body much longer than the natural hormone whose receptor’s they’re sneakily agonizing (sounds bad, but in this context it’s good), allowing sustained activation of gene programs.
How exactly? It increases signaling, which ultimately leads to phosphorylation of the Med14 protein within the Mediator transcription complex.
That’s a lot of big words, so to simplify a little: the Mediator complex controls large sets of genes rather than a single pathway, so activating Med14 can switch on broad gene programs that reshape how cells function over time.
Researchers (Dr. Sam Van de Velde et al.) examined the practical side of this, and found for example that in pancreatic beta cells, the result is improved stress resistance, greater survival, and enhanced insulin production, which helps counter metabolic syndrome, and its associated more specific maladies such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease of various kinds, etc.
And because these processes (per the Med14 switch etc) can occur in many different kinds of tissue, similar gene-expression changes may be occuring in the heart, brain, blood vessels, and fat tissue—but more research will be needed to confirm that, of course.
Read in full: How do GLP-1 agonists affect gene expression?
Related: Demystifying Peptides ← remember that GLP-1 is a peptide! GLP stands for “glucagon-like peptide”, and we talk about peptides’ effects on gene expression here too
The schizophrenia biomarker hiding in your cheek
Schizophrenia currently has no single definitive laboratory test, so clinicians rely mainly on observing symptoms such as hallucinations, delusions, and disorganized thinking, which can delay diagnosis for months, not to mention leave a lot of room for subjectivity on the part of the clinician.
However, researchers (Dr. Christen Crosta et al.) compared cheek-swab samples from 27 people with schizophrenia and 27 matched healthy controls, and found that patients with schizophrenia showed significantly higher activity of the Sp4 gene, which is involved in brain development and whose elevated expression correlated with more severe symptoms such as hallucinations and delusions.
Dr. Crosta and her team also found that schizophrenic patients had higher levels of the protein HSP60, which appears to be regulated by Sp4 and may act as a sort of “downstream” biological indicator of schizophrenia.
In short, if confirmed in larger studies, a simple cheek swab could help detect schizophrenia earlier or monitor disease progression in a fast and non-invasive way.
Read in full: Cheek cells may provide clues to schizophrenia risk
Related: The Disordered Mind – by Dr. Eric Kandel
A spray-on immune shield has been developed!
Organ transplant recipients usually take immunosuppressants to prevent rejection, but these drugs weaken the entire immune system (thus leaving the patient very vulnerable to infections; it’s a lot like giving someone a slightly weaker form of AIDS) and also can cause complications such as kidney toxicity.
So, it’s not great. Better than not having the organ in question, of course, but not great.
However! Researchers (Dr. Hyung Joon Cha et al.) have developed microscopic gel particles containing immunosuppressants that stick to organ surfaces using adhesive proteins inspired by mussels’ ability to cling to wet surfaces.
In other words: the sprayed microgels form an invisible layer on the organ that remains attached to the wet tissue and slowly releases the drug locally at the transplant site.
And, it worked! Because the medication stays mainly on the transplanted organ rather than circulating through the bloodstream, this approach is able to suppress rejection while minimizing whole-body side effects.
Read in full: Spray-on “immune-shield” coats transplant organs to curb rejection
Related: Rapamycin Can Slow Aging By 20% (But Watch Out) ← an alternative immunosuppressant
Take care!
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