I’ve been diagnosed with cancer. How do I tell my children?

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With around one in 50 adults diagnosed with cancer each year, many people are faced with the difficult task of sharing the news of their diagnosis with their loved ones. Parents with cancer may be most worried about telling their children.

It’s best to give children factual and age-appropriate information, so children don’t create their own explanations or blame themselves. Over time, supportive family relationships and open communication help children adjust to their parent’s diagnosis and treatment.

It’s natural to feel you don’t have the skills or knowledge to talk with your children about cancer. But preparing for the conversation can improve your confidence.

Benjamin Manley/Unsplash

Preparing for the conversation

Choose a suitable time and location in a place where your children feel comfortable. Turn off distractions such as screens and phones.

For teenagers, who can find face-to-face conversations confronting, think about talking while you are going for a walk.

Consider if you will tell all children at once or separately. Will you be the only adult present, or will having another adult close to your child be helpful? Another adult might give your children a person they can talk to later, especially to answer questions they might be worried about asking you.

Two sisters
Choose the time and location when your children feel comfortable. Craig Adderley/Pexels

Finally, plan what to do after the conversation, like doing an activity with them that they enjoy. Older children and teenagers might want some time alone to digest the news, but you can suggest things you know they like to do to relax.

Also consider what you might need to support yourself.

Preparing the words

Parents might be worried about the best words or language to use to make sure the explanations are at a level their child understands. Make a plan for what you will say and take notes to stay on track.

The toughest part is likely to be saying to your children that you have cancer. It can help to practise saying those words out aloud.

Ask family and friends for their feedback on what you want to say. Make use of guides by the Cancer Council, which provide age-appropriate wording for explaining medical terms like “cancer”, “chemotherapy” and “tumour”.

Having the conversation

Being open, honest and factual is important. Consider the balance between being too vague, and providing too much information. The amount and type of information you give will be based on their age and previous experiences with illness.

Remember, if things don’t go as planned, you can always try again later.

Start by telling your children the news in a few short sentences, describing what you know about the diagnosis in language suitable for their age. Generally, this information will include the name of the cancer, the area of the body affected and what will be involved in treatment.

Let them know what to expect in the coming weeks and months. Balance hope with reality. For example:

The doctors will do everything they can to help me get well. But, it is going to be a long road and the treatments will make me quite sick.

Check what your child knows about cancer. Young children may not know much about cancer, while primary school-aged children are starting to understand that it is a serious illness. Young children may worry about becoming unwell themselves, or other loved ones becoming sick.

Child hiding in cushions
Young children might worry about other loved ones becoming sick. Pixabay/Pexels

Older children and teenagers may have experiences with cancer through other family members, friends at school or social media.

This process allows you to correct any misconceptions and provides opportunities for them to ask questions. Regardless of their level of knowledge, it is important to reassure them that the cancer is not their fault.

Ask them if there is anything they want to know or say. Talk to them about what will stay the same as well as what may change. For example:

You can still do gymnastics, but sometimes Kate’s mum will have to pick you up if I am having treatment.

If you can’t answer their questions, be OK with saying “I’m not sure”, or “I will try to find out”.

Finally, tell children you love them and offer them comfort.

How might they respond?

Be prepared for a range of different responses. Some might be distressed and cry, others might be angry, and some might not seem upset at all. This might be due to shock, or a sign they need time to process the news. It also might mean they are trying to be brave because they don’t want to upset you.

Children’s reactions will change over time as they come to terms with the news and process the information. They might seem like they are happy and coping well, then be teary and clingy, or angry and irritable.

Older children and teenagers may ask if they can tell their friends and family about what is happening. It may be useful to come together as a family to discuss how to inform friends and family.

What’s next?

Consider the conversation the first of many ongoing discussions. Let children know they can talk to you and ask questions.

Resources might also help; for example, The Cancer Council’s app for children and teenagers and Redkite’s library of free books for families affected by cancer.

If you or other adults involved in the children’s lives are concerned about how they are coping, speak to your GP or treating specialist about options for psychological support.

Cassy Dittman, Senior Lecturer/Head of Course (Undergraduate Psychology), Research Fellow, Manna Institute, CQUniversity Australia; Govind Krishnamoorthy, Senior Lecturer, School of Psychology and Wellbeing, Post Doctoral Fellow, Manna Institute, University of Southern Queensland, and Marg Rogers, Senior Lecturer, Early Childhood Education; Post Doctoral Fellow, Manna Institute, University of New England

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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  • Rapid Rise in Syphilis Hits Native Americans Hardest

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    From her base in Gallup, New Mexico, Melissa Wyaco supervises about two dozen public health nurses who crisscross the sprawling Navajo Nation searching for patients who have tested positive for or been exposed to a disease once nearly eradicated in the U.S.: syphilis.

    Infection rates in this region of the Southwest — the 27,000-square-mile reservation encompasses parts of Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah — are among the nation’s highest. And they’re far worse than anything Wyaco, who is from Zuni Pueblo (about 40 miles south of Gallup) and is the nurse consultant for the Navajo Area Indian Health Service, has seen in her 30-year nursing career.

    Syphilis infections nationwide have climbed rapidly in recent years, reaching a 70-year high in 2022, according to the most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That rise comes amid a shortage of penicillin, the most effective treatment. Simultaneously, congenital syphilis — syphilis passed from a pregnant person to a baby — has similarly spun out of control. Untreated, congenital syphilis can cause bone deformities, severe anemia, jaundice, meningitis, and even death. In 2022, the CDC recorded 231 stillbirths and 51 infant deaths caused by syphilis, out of 3,761 congenital syphilis cases reported that year.

    And while infections have risen across the U.S., no demographic has been hit harder than Native Americans. The CDC data released in January shows that the rate of congenital syphilis among American Indians and Alaska Natives was triple the rate for African Americans and nearly 12 times the rate for white babies in 2022.

    “This is a disease we thought we were going to eradicate not that long ago, because we have a treatment that works really well,” said Meghan Curry O’Connell, a member of the Cherokee Nation and chief public health officer at the Great Plains Tribal Leaders’ Health Board, who is based in South Dakota.

    Instead, the rate of congenital syphilis infections among Native Americans (644.7 cases per 100,000 people in 2022) is now comparable to the rate for the entire U.S. population in 1941 (651.1) — before doctors began using penicillin to cure syphilis. (The rate fell to 6.6 nationally in 1983.)

    O’Connell said that’s why the Great Plains Tribal Leaders’ Health Board and tribal leaders from North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Iowa have asked federal Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra to declare a public health emergency in their states. A declaration would expand staffing, funding, and access to contact tracing data across their region.

    “Syphilis is deadly to babies. It’s highly infectious, and it causes very severe outcomes,” O’Connell said. “We need to have people doing boots-on-the-ground work” right now.

    In 2022, New Mexico reported the highest rate of congenital syphilis among states. Primary and secondary syphilis infections, which are not passed to infants, were highest in South Dakota, which had the second-highest rate of congenital syphilis in 2022. In 2021, the most recent year for which demographic data is available, South Dakota had the second-worst rate nationwide (after the District of Columbia) — and numbers were highest among the state’s large Native population.

    In an October news release, the New Mexico Department of Health noted that the state had “reported a 660% increase in cases of congenital syphilis over the past five years.” A year earlier, in 2017, New Mexico reported only one case — but by 2020, that number had risen to 43, then to 76 in 2022.

    Starting in 2020, the covid-19 pandemic made things worse. “Public health across the country got almost 95% diverted to doing covid care,” said Jonathan Iralu, the Indian Health Service chief clinical consultant for infectious diseases, who is based at the Gallup Indian Medical Center. “This was a really hard-hit area.”

    At one point early in the pandemic, the Navajo Nation reported the highest covid rate in the U.S. Iralu suspects patients with syphilis symptoms may have avoided seeing a doctor for fear of catching covid. That said, he doesn’t think it’s fair to blame the pandemic for the high rates of syphilis, or the high rates of women passing infections to their babies during pregnancy, that continue four years later.

    Native Americans are more likely to live in rural areas, far from hospital obstetric units, than any other racial or ethnic group. As a result, many do not receive prenatal care until later in pregnancy, if at all. That often means providers cannot test and treat patients for syphilis before delivery.

    In New Mexico, 23% of patients did not receive prenatal care until the fifth month of pregnancy or later, or received fewer than half the appropriate number of visits for the infant’s gestational age in 2023 (the national average is less than 16%).

    Inadequate prenatal care is especially risky for Native Americans, who have a greater chance than other ethnic groups of passing on a syphilis infection if they become pregnant. That’s because, among Native communities, syphilis infections are just as common in women as in men. In every other ethnic group, men are at least twice as likely to contract syphilis, largely because men who have sex with men are more susceptible to infection. O’Connell said it’s not clear why women in Native communities are disproportionately affected by syphilis.

    “The Navajo Nation is a maternal health desert,” said Amanda Singer, a Diné (Navajo) doula and lactation counselor in Arizona who is also executive director of the Navajo Breastfeeding Coalition/Diné Doula Collective. On some parts of the reservation, patients have to drive more than 100 miles to reach obstetric services. “There’s a really high number of pregnant women who don’t get prenatal care throughout the whole pregnancy.”

    She said that’s due not only to a lack of services but also to a mistrust of health care providers who don’t understand Native culture. Some also worry that providers might report patients who use illicit substances during their pregnancies to the police or child welfare. But it’s also because of a shrinking network of facilities: Two of the Navajo area’s labor and delivery wards have closed in the past decade. According to a recent report, more than half of U.S. rural hospitals no longer offer labor and delivery services.

    Singer and the other doulas in her network believe New Mexico and Arizona could combat the syphilis epidemic by expanding access to prenatal care in rural Indigenous communities. Singer imagines a system in which midwives, doulas, and lactation counselors are able to travel to families and offer prenatal care “in their own home.”

    O’Connell added that data-sharing arrangements between tribes and state, federal, and IHS offices vary widely across the country, but have posed an additional challenge to tackling the epidemic in some Native communities, including her own. Her Tribal Epidemiology Center is fighting to access South Dakota’s state data.

    In the Navajo Nation and surrounding area, Iralu said, IHS infectious disease doctors meet with tribal officials every month, and he recommends that all IHS service areas have regular meetings of state, tribal, and IHS providers and public health nurses to ensure every pregnant person in those areas has been tested and treated.

    IHS now recommends all patients be tested for syphilis yearly, and tests pregnant patients three times. It also expanded rapid and express testing and started offering DoxyPEP, an antibiotic that transgender women and men who have sex with men can take up to 72 hours after sex and that has been shown to reduce syphilis transmission by 87%. But perhaps the most significant change IHS has made is offering testing and treatment in the field.

    Today, the public health nurses Wyaco supervises can test and treat patients for syphilis at home — something she couldn’t do when she was one of them just three years ago.

    “Why not bring the penicillin to the patient instead of trying to drag the patient in to the penicillin?” said Iralu.

    It’s not a tactic IHS uses for every patient, but it’s been effective in treating those who might pass an infection on to a partner or baby.

    Iralu expects to see an expansion in street medicine in urban areas and van outreach in rural areas, in coming years, bringing more testing to communities — as well as an effort to put tests in patients’ hands through vending machines and the mail.

    “This is a radical departure from our past,” he said. “But I think that’s the wave of the future.”

    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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  • Five Advance Warnings of Multiple Sclerosis

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    Five Advance Warnings of Multiple Sclerosis

    First things first, a quick check-in with regard to how much you know about multiple sclerosis (MS):

    • Do you know what causes it?
    • Do you know how it happens?
    • Do you know how it can be fixed?

    If your answer to the above questions is “no”, then take solace in the fact that modern science doesn’t know either.

    What we do know is that it’s an autoimmune condition, and that it results in the degradation of myelin, the “insulator” of nerves, in the central nervous system.

    • How exactly this is brought about remains unclear, though there are several leading hypotheses including autoimmune attack of myelin itself, or disruption to the production of myelin.
    • Treatments look to reduce/mitigate inflammation, and/or treat other symptoms (which are many and various) on an as-needed basis.

    If you’re wondering about the prognosis after diagnosis, the scientific consensus on that is also “we don’t know”:

    Read: Personalized medicine in multiple sclerosis: hope or reality?

    this paper, like every other one we considered putting in that spot, concludes with basically begging for research to be done to identify biomarkers in a useful fashion that could help classify many distinct forms of MS, rather than the current “you have MS, but who knows what that will mean for you personally because it’s so varied” approach.

    The Five Advance Warning Signs

    Something we do know! First, we’ll quote directly the researchers’ conclusion:

    ❝We identified 5 health conditions associated with subsequent MS diagnosis, which may be considered not only prodromal but also early-stage symptoms.

    However, these health conditions overlap with prodrome of two other autoimmune diseases, hence they lack specificity to MS.❞

    So, these things are a warning, five alarm bells, but not necessarily diagnostic criteria.

    Without further ado, the five things are:

    1. depression
    2. sexual disorders
    3. constipation
    4. cystitis
    5. urinary tract infections

    ❝This association was sufficiently robust at the statistical level for us to state that these are early clinical warning signs, probably related to damage to the nervous system, in patients who will later be diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

    The overrepresentation of these symptoms persisted and even increased over the five years after diagnosis.❞

    ~ Dr. Céline Louapre

    Read the paper for yourself:

    Association Between Diseases and Symptoms Diagnosed in Primary Care and the Subsequent Specific Risk of Multiple Sclerosis

    Hot off the press! Published only yesterday!

    Want to know more about MS?

    Here’s a very comprehensive guide:

    National clinical guideline for diagnosis and management of multiple sclerosis

    Take care!

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  • How To Unchoke Yourself If You Are Dying Alone

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    The first things that most people think of, won’t work. This firefighter advises on how to actually do it:

    Steps to take

    Zero’th step: he doesn’t mention this, but try coughing first. You might think coughing will be a natural reaction anyway, but that tends only to happen automatically with small partial obstructions, not a complete blockage. Either way, try to cough forcefully to see if it dislodges whatever you’re choking on. If that doesn’t work…

    Firstly: don’t rely on calling for help if you’re alone and cannot speak; you’re unlikely to be able to communicate and you will just waste time (when you don’t have time to waste). Even if you call emergency services and they trace your location, chances are that, at most, a cop car will show up some hours later to see what it was about. They will not dispatch an ambulance on the strength of “someone called and said nothing”.

    Secondly, it is probable that will not be able to perform an abdominal thrust (also called Heimlich maneuvre in the US) on yourself the way you could on another person, and hitting your chest with your hand will produce insufficient force even if you’re quite strong. Nor are you likely to be able to slap yourself on the back to way you might another person.

    Instead, he advises:

    • Find a sturdy object: use a chair, table, countertop, or another firm surface that has an edge.
    • Use gravity to perform self-Heimlich: position yourself with the edge of the object just below your sternum (he says ribcage, but the visuals show he clearly means the bottom of the sternum, where the diaphragm is, not the lower ribs). Fall onto the object forcefully to create pressure and dislodge the obstruction. This will not be fun.
    • If it doesn’t work indoors: move to a visible outdoor location like your yard or a neighbor’s lawn. Falling visibly on the ground will likely alert someone to call for help.

    While doing the above, remain as calm as possible, as this will not only increase the length of time you have before passing out, but will also help avoid your throat muscles tightening even more, worsening the choking.

    After doing the above, seek medical attention now that you can communicate; you’ve probably broken some ribs and you might have organ damage.

    For more on all this plus visual demonstrations, enjoy:

    Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!

    Want to learn more?

    You might also like to read:

    How To Survive A Heart Attack When You’re Alone ← very different advice for this scenario!

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  • Black Pepper’s Impressive Anti-Cancer Arsenal

    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.

    Black Pepper’s Impressive Anti-Cancer Arsenal (And More)

    Piperine, a compound found in Piper nigrum (black pepper, to its friends), has many health benefits. It’s included as a minor ingredient in some other supplements, because it boosts bioavailability. In its form as a kitchen spice, it’s definitely a superfood.

    What does it do?

    First, three things that generally go together:

    These things often go together for the simple reason that oxidative stress, inflammation, and cancer often go together. In each case, it’s a matter of cellular wear-and-tear, and what can mitigate that.

    For what it’s worth, there’s generally a fourth pillar: anti-aging. This is again for the same reason. That said, black pepper hasn’t (so far as we could find) been studied specifically for its anti-aging properties, so we can’t cite that here as an evidence-based claim.

    Nevertheless, it’s a reasonable inference that something that fights oxidation, inflammation, and cancer, will often also slow aging.

    Special note on the anti-cancer properties

    We noticed two very interesting things while researching piperine’s anti-cancer properties. It’s not just that it reduces cancer risk and slows tumor growth in extant cancers (as we might expect from the above-discussed properties). Let’s spotlight some studies:

    It is selectively cytotoxic (that’s a good thing)

    Piperine was found to be selectively cytotoxic to cancerous cells, while not being cytotoxic to non-cancerous cells. To this end, it’s a very promising cancer-sniper:

    Piperine as a Potential Anti-cancer Agent: A Review on Preclinical Studies

    It can reverse multi-drug resistance in cancer cells

    P-glycoprotein, found in our body, is a drug-transporter that is known for “washing out” chemotherapeutic drugs from cancer cells. To date, no drug has been approved to inhibit P-glycoprotein, but piperine has been found to do the job:

    Targeting P-glycoprotein: Investigation of piperine analogs for overcoming drug resistance in cancer

    What’s this about piperine analogs, though? Basically the researchers found a way to “tweak” piperine to make it even more effective. They called this tweaked version “Pip1”, because calling it by its chemical name,

    ((2E,4E)-5-(benzo[d][1,3]dioxol-5-yl)-1-(6,7-dimethoxy-3,4-dihydroisoquinolin-2(1 H)-yl)penta-2,4-dien-1-one)

    …got a bit unwieldy.

    The upshot is: Pip1 is better, but piperine itself is also good.

    Other benefits

    Piperine does have other benefits too, but the above is what we were most excited to talk about today. Its other benefits include:

    Enjoy!

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  • Burn! How To Boost Your Metabolism

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    Let’s burn! Metabolic tweaks and hacks

    Our metabolism is, for as long as we live, a constantly moving thing. And it’s not a monolith either; there are parts of our metabolism that can speed up or slow down independently of others.

    If we talk about metabolism without clarifying context, though, this is usually about one’s “basal metabolic rate”, that is, how many calories we burn just by being alive.

    Why do we want to speed it up? Might we ever want to slow it down?

    We might want to slow our metabolism down in survival circumstances, but generally speaking, a faster metabolism is a better one.

    Yes, even when it comes to aging. Because although metabolism comes with metabolizing oxygen (which, ironically, tends to kill us eventually, since this is a key part of cellular aging), it is still beneficial to replace cells sooner rather than later. The later we replace a given cell (ie, the longer the cell lives), the more damaged it gets, and then the copy is damaged from the start, because the damage was copied along with it. So, best to have a fast metabolism to replace cells quickly when they are young and healthy.

    A quick metabolism helps the body to do this.

    Most people, of course, are interested in a fast metabolism to burn off fat, but beware: if you increase your metabolism without consideration to how and when you consume calories, you will simply end up eating more to compensate.

    One final quick note before we begin:

    Limitations

    There’s a lot we can do to change our metabolism, but there are some things that may be outside of our control. They include:

    • Age—we can influence our biological age, but we cannot (yet!) halt aging, so this will happen
    • Body size—and yes we can change this a bit, but we all have our own “basic frame” to work with. Someone who is 6’6” is never going to be able to have the same lower-end-of-scale body mass of someone who is 5’0”, say.
    • Sex—this is about hormones, and HRT is a thing, but for example, broadly speaking, men will have faster metabolisms than women, because of hormonal differences.
    • Medical conditions—often also related to other hormones, but for example someone with Type 1 Diabetes is going to have a very different relationship with their metabolism than someone without, and someone with a hypo- or hyperactive thyroid will again have a very different metabolism in a way that that lifestyle factors can’t completely compensate for.

    The tips and tricks

    Intermittent fasting

    Intermittent fasting has been found to, amongst other things, promote healthy apoptosis and autophagy (in other words: early programmed cell death and recycling—these are good things).

    It also has anti-inflammatory benefits and decreases the risk of insulin resistance. In other words, intermittent fasting boosts the metabolism while simultaneously guarding against some of the dangers of a faster metabolism (harms you’d get if you instead increased your metabolism by doing intense exercise and then eating a mountain of convenience food to compensate)

    Read the science: Intermittent Fasting: Is the Wait Worth the Weight?

    Read our prior article: Fasting Without Crashing? We Sort The Science From The Hype

    Enjoy plenty of protein

    This one won’t speed your metabolism up, so much as help it avoid slowing down as a result of fat loss.

    Because of our body’s marvelous homeostatic system trying to keep our body from changing status at any given time, often when we lose fat, our body drops our metabolism to compensate, thinking we are in an ongoing survival situation and food is scarce so we’d better conserve energy (as fat). That’s a pain for would-be weight-loss dieters!

    Eating protein can let our body know that we’re perfectly safe and not starving, so it will keep the metabolism ticking over nicely, without putting on fat.

    Read the science: The role of protein in weight loss and maintenance

    Stay hydrated

    People think of drinking water as part of a weight loss program being just about filling oneself up, and that is a thing, but it also has a role to play in our metabolism. Specifically, lipolysis (the process of removing fat).

    Because, we are mostly water. Not only is it the main content of our various body tissue cells, but also, of particular note, our blood (the means by which everything is transported around our body) is mostly water, too.

    It’s hard for the body to keep everything ticking over like a well-oiled machine if its means of transportation is sluggish!

    Check it out: Increased Hydration Can Be Associated with Weight Loss

    Take a stand

    That basal metabolic rate we talked about?

    • If you’re lying down at rest, that’s what your metabolism will be like.
    • If you’re sitting up, it’ll be a little quicker, but not much.
    • If you’re standing, suddenly half your body is doing things, and you don’t even notice them because they’re just stabilizing muscles and the like, but on a cellular level, your body gets very busy.

    Read all about it: Cardiometabolic impact of changing sitting, standing, and stepping in the workplace

    Time to invest in a standing desk? Or a treadmill in front of the TV?

    The spice of life

    Capsaicin, the compound in many kinds of pepper that give them their spicy flavor, boosts the metabolism. In the words of Tremblay et al for the International Journal of Obesity:

    ❝[Capsaicin] stimulates the sympathoadrenal system that mediates the thermogenic and anorexigenic effects of capsaicinoids.

    Capsaicinoids have been found to accentuate the impact of caloric restriction on body weight loss.

    Some studies have also shown that capsinoids increase energy expenditure.

    Capsaicin supplementation attenuates or even prevents the increase in hunger and decrease in fullness as well as the decrease in energy expenditure and fat oxidation, which normally result from energy restriction❞

    Read for yourself: Capsaicinoids: a spicy solution to the management of obesity?

    You snooze, you lose (fat)

    While exercising is generally touted as the road to weight loss, and certainly regular exercise does have a part to play, doing so without good rest will have bad results.

    In fact, even if you’re not exercising, if you don’t get enough sleep your metabolism will get sluggish to try to slow you down and encourage you to sleep.

    So, be proactive, and make getting enough good quality sleep a priority.

    See: Effects of sleep restriction on metabolism-related parameters in healthy adults: A comprehensive review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials

    Eat for metabolic health

    Aside from the chilli peppers we mentioned, there are other foods associated with good metabolic health. We don’t have room to go into the science of each of them here, but here’s a well-researched, well-sourced standalone article listing some top choices:

    The 12 Best Foods to Boost Your Metabolism

    Enjoy!

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  • Kidney Beans or Black Beans – Which is Healthier?

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    Our Verdict

    When comparing kidney beans to black beans, we picked the black beans.

    Why?

    First, do note that black beans are also known as turtle beans, or if one wants to hedge one’s bets, black turtle beans. It’s all the same bean. As a small linguistic note, kidney beans are known as “red beans” in many languages, so we could have called this “red beans vs black beans”, but that wouldn’t have landed so well with our largely anglophone readership. So, kidney beans vs black beans it is!

    They’re certainly both great, and this is a close one today…

    In terms of macros, they’re equal on protein and black beans have more carbs and/but also more fiber. So far, so equal—or rather, if one pulls ahead of the other here, it’s a matter of subjective priorities.

    In the category of vitamins, they’re equal on vitamins B2, B3, and choline, while kidney beans have more of vitamins B6, B9, C, and K, and black beans have more of vitamins A, B1, B5, and E. In other words, the two beans are still tied with a 4:4 split, unless we want to take into account that that vitamin E difference is that black beans have 29x more vitamin E, in which case, black beans move ahead.

    When it comes to minerals, finally the winner becomes apparent; while kidney beans have a little more manganese and zinc, on the other hand black beans have more calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, and selenium. However, it should be noted that honestly, the margins aren’t huge here and kidney beans are almost as good for all of these minerals.

    In short, black beans win the day, but kidney beans are very close behind, so enjoy whichever you prefer, or better yet, both! They go great together in tacos, burritos, or similar, by the way.

    Want to learn more?

    You might like to read:

    Take care!

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