Kidney Beans vs Fava Beans – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing kidney beans to fava beans, we picked the kidney beans.
Why?
It’s a simple and straightforward one today!
The macronutrient profiles are mostly comparable, but kidney beans do have a little more protein and a little more fiber.
In the category of vitamins, kidney beans have more of vitamins B1, B5, B6, B9, C, E, & K, while fava beans boast only more of vitamins B2 and B3. They are both equally good sources of choline, but the general weight of vitamins is very much in kidney beans’ favor, with a 7:2 lead, most of which have generous margins.
When it comes to minerals, kidney beans have more iron, phosphorus, and potassium, while fava beans have more copper and selenium. They’re both equally good sources of other minerals they both contain. Still, a 3:2 victory for kidney beans on the mineral front.
Adding up the moderate victory on macros, the strong victory on vitamins, and the slight victory on minerals, all in all makes for a clear win for kidney beans.
Still, enjoy both! Diversity is healthy.
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
Chickpeas vs Black Beans – Which is Healthier?
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Debunking the myth that vaccines cause autism
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The myth that autism is linked to childhood vaccines first appeared in a 1998 study by British physician Dr. Andrew Wakefield. The study was later retracted, and Wakefield was discredited. But nearly three decades after the study’s publication, the myth persists, championed by activists, political leaders, and even potential health officials.
There is overwhelming evidence that there is no link between vaccines and autism. “No one has any real or solid evidence that vaccines cause autism,” says Catherine Lord, a psychologist and autism researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Here are just some of the many reasons that we know vaccines don’t cause autism.
The Wakefield study has been thoroughly discredited
In 1998, the Lancet published a study describing a small group of children who reportedly had bowel inflammation and developed autism within a month of getting the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine. The study proposed that the vaccination triggered bowel inflammation and developmental delays, including autism. Lead author Andrew Wakefield coined the term “autistic enterocolitis” to describe the condition he and his colleagues claimed to have discovered.
The study received significant media attention and immediate criticism from scientists, who pointed out the study’s small size, lack of controls, and insufficient evidence to support its conclusions.
Subsequent research published over the next few years refuted Wakefield’s findings. A 1999 Lancet study found no link between autism and the MMR vaccine, and a 2001 study found no evidence of a link or the existence of so-called autistic enterocolitis.
In 2010, the Lancet finally retracted Wakefield’s fraudulent study, noting that “several elements” of the study were “incorrect” and that the experiments carried out on children had not been approved by an ethics board. The journal’s editor called the paper’s conclusions “utterly false.”
A few months later, Wakefield was stripped of his medical license by the United Kingdom’s General Medical Council. The council deemed Wakefield “dishonest and irresponsible” and concluded that he conducted unethical experiments on children.
The committee’s investigation also revealed that, less than a year before he published his study claiming that the MMR vaccine was linked to bowel inflammation that triggered autism, Wakefield filed a patent for a standalone measles vaccine and inflammatory bowel disease treatment.
Thimerosal was removed from childhood vaccines in 2001—with no effect on autism rates
A 2003 study published by a conservative group known for promoting anti-science myths—including that HIV doesn’t cause AIDS—first proposed that the preservative thimerosal in childhood vaccines is linked to autism. This supposed link was subsequently disproven.
Thimerosal is added in small amounts to some vaccines to prevent dangerous bacterial and fungal contamination. The substance contains ethylmercury, a form of mercury that the body quickly and safely processes in small doses.
Ethylmercury is different from methylmercury, a far more dangerous form of mercury that is toxic at low doses. By contrast, the small amount of thimerosal in some vaccines is harmless to humans and is equal to the amount of mercury in a can of tuna.
The preservative was removed from childhood vaccines as a precautionary measure in 2001. With the exception of some flu shots, no childhood vaccine contains the preservative and hasn’t for more than two decades. Autism rates have not decreased as a result of thimerosal being removed from childhood immunization vaccines. While some types of the annual flu vaccine contain thimerosal, you can get one without it.
Extensive research also shows that neither thimerosal nor methylmercury at any dose is linked to autism. A 2008 study of statewide California data found that autism rates “increased consistently for children born from 1989 through 2003, inclusive of the period when exposure to [thimerosal-containing vaccines] has declined.”
Autism rates are the same in vaccinated and unvaccinated children
Vaccine opponents often falsely claim that vaccinated children are more likely than unvaccinated children to develop autism. Decades of research disprove this false claim.
A 2002 analysis of every child born in Denmark over eight years found that children who received MMR vaccines were no more likely to be diagnosed with autism than unvaccinated children.
A 2015 study of over 95,000 U.S. siblings found that MMR vaccination is not associated with increased autism diagnosis. This was true even among the siblings of children with autism, who are seven times more likely to develop autism than children without an autistic sibling.
And a 2018 study found some evidence that children with autism—and their siblings—were more likely to be unvaccinated or under-vaccinated than children without autism.
Vaccination also has no impact on autism rates at the population level, regardless of the age at which children get vaccinated.
“In comparing countries that have different timing and levels of vaccination … there’s no difference in autism,” says Lord. “You can look at different countries with different rates of autism, and there’s no relationship between the rates of autism and vaccinations.”
Countries such as Taiwan, Tunisia, Turkey, and Morocco, which have some of the world’s lowest autism rates, have childhood immunization rates that are nearly identical to countries with the highest autism rates, including Sweden, Japan, Brunei, and Singapore.
Improved awareness and diagnosis play a role in rising autism rates
Autism was first described in 1911 when it was considered to be a form of severe schizophrenia. Over a century later, our understanding of autism has changed drastically, as have diagnostic standards.
A 2013 scientific article describing how medical and social perceptions of autism have evolved explains that “the diagnoses of schizophrenia, psychosis and autism in children were largely interchangeable during the 1940s and 1950s.” Beginning in the 1960s, methods of diagnosing autism improved, “increasing the number of children who were considered to display autistic traits.”
The autism diagnosis was changed to autism spectrum disorder in 2013. “This category is now very broad, which was an intentional choice to help provide services to the greatest number of people who might need them,” writes Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz, an epidemiologist and creator of the popular Health Nerd blog.
“Rather than the severe intellectual disability of the 1940s and 50s, [autism spectrum disorder] is a group of behaviours that can be any severity as long as they are persistent and impact people’s daily functioning in a significant way.”
For more information about autism, talk to your health care provider.
This article first appeared on Public Good News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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Coca-Cola vs Diet Coke – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing Coca-Cola to Diet Coke, we picked the Diet Coke.
Why?
While the Diet Coke is bad, the Coca-Cola has mostly the same problems plus sugar.
The sugar in a can of Coca-Cola is 39g high-fructose corn syrup (the worst kind of sugar yet known to humanity), and of course it’s being delivered in liquid form (the most bioavailable way to get, which in this case, is bad).
To put those 39g into perspective, the daily recommended amount of sugar is 36g for men or 25g for women, according to the AHA.
The sweetener in Diet Coke is aspartame, which has had a lot of health risk accusations made against it, most of which have not stood up to scrutiny, and the main risk it does have is “it mimics sugar too well” and it can increase cravings for sweetness, and therefore higher consumption of sugars in other products. For this reason, the World Health Organization has recommended to simply reduce sugar intake without looking to artificial sweeteners to help.
Nevertheless, aspartame has been found safe (in moderate doses; the upper tolerance level would equate to more than 20 cans of diet coke per day) by food safety agencies ranging from the FDA to the EFSA, based on a large body of science.
Other problems that Diet Coke has are present in Coca-Cola too, such as its acidic nature (bad for tooth enamel) and gassy nature (messes with leptin/ghrelin balance).
Summary: the Diet Coke is relatively less unhealthy, but is still bad in numerous ways, and remains best avoided.
Read more:
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Federal Panel Prescribes New Mental Health Strategy To Curb Maternal Deaths
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BRIDGEPORT, Conn. — Milagros Aquino was trying to find a new place to live and had been struggling to get used to new foods after she moved to Bridgeport from Peru with her husband and young son in 2023.
When Aquino, now 31, got pregnant in May 2023, “instantly everything got so much worse than before,” she said. “I was so sad and lying in bed all day. I was really lost and just surviving.”
Aquino has lots of company.
Perinatal depression affects as many as 20% of women in the United States during pregnancy, the postpartum period, or both, according to studies. In some states, anxiety or depression afflicts nearly a quarter of new mothers or pregnant women.
Many women in the U.S. go untreated because there is no widely deployed system to screen for mental illness in mothers, despite widespread recommendations to do so. Experts say the lack of screening has driven higher rates of mental illness, suicide, and drug overdoses that are now the leading causes of death in the first year after a woman gives birth.
“This is a systemic issue, a medical issue, and a human rights issue,” said Lindsay R. Standeven, a perinatal psychiatrist and the clinical and education director of the Johns Hopkins Reproductive Mental Health Center.
Standeven said the root causes of the problem include racial and socioeconomic disparities in maternal care and a lack of support systems for new mothers. She also pointed a finger at a shortage of mental health professionals, insufficient maternal mental health training for providers, and insufficient reimbursement for mental health services. Finally, Standeven said, the problem is exacerbated by the absence of national maternity leave policies, and the access to weapons.
Those factors helped drive a 105% increase in postpartum depression from 2010 to 2021, according to the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology.
For Aquino, it wasn’t until the last weeks of her pregnancy, when she signed up for acupuncture to relieve her stress, that a social worker helped her get care through the Emme Coalition, which connects girls and women with financial help, mental health counseling services, and other resources.
Mothers diagnosed with perinatal depression or anxiety during or after pregnancy are at about three times the risk of suicidal behavior and six times the risk of suicide compared with mothers without a mood disorder, according to recent U.S. and international studies in JAMA Network Open and The BMJ.
The toll of the maternal mental health crisis is particularly acute in rural communities that have become maternity care deserts, as small hospitals close their labor and delivery units because of plummeting birth rates, or because of financial or staffing issues.
This week, the Maternal Mental Health Task Force — co-led by the Office on Women’s Health and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and formed in September to respond to the problem — recommended creating maternity care centers that could serve as hubs of integrated care and birthing facilities by building upon the services and personnel already in communities.
The task force will soon determine what portions of the plan will require congressional action and funding to implement and what will be “low-hanging fruit,” said Joy Burkhard, a member of the task force and the executive director of the nonprofit Policy Center for Maternal Mental Health.
Burkhard said equitable access to care is essential. The task force recommended that federal officials identify areas where maternity centers should be placed based on data identifying the underserved. “Rural America,” she said, “is first and foremost.”
There are shortages of care in “unlikely areas,” including Los Angeles County, where some maternity wards have recently closed, said Burkhard. Urban areas that are underserved would also be eligible to get the new centers.
“All that mothers are asking for is maternity care that makes sense. Right now, none of that exists,” she said.
Several pilot programs are designed to help struggling mothers by training and equipping midwives and doulas, people who provide guidance and support to the mothers of newborns.
In Montana, rates of maternal depression before, during, and after pregnancy are higher than the national average. From 2017 to 2020, approximately 15% of mothers experienced postpartum depression and 27% experienced perinatal depression, according to the Montana Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System. The state had the sixth-highest maternal mortality rate in the country in 2019, when it received a federal grant to begin training doulas.
To date, the program has trained 108 doulas, many of whom are Native American. Native Americans make up 6.6% of Montana’s population. Indigenous people, particularly those in rural areas, have twice the national rate of severe maternal morbidity and mortality compared with white women, according to a study in Obstetrics and Gynecology.
Stephanie Fitch, grant manager at Montana Obstetrics & Maternal Support at Billings Clinic, said training doulas “has the potential to counter systemic barriers that disproportionately impact our tribal communities and improve overall community health.”
Twelve states and Washington, D.C., have Medicaid coverage for doula care, according to the National Health Law Program. They are California, Florida, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Virginia. Medicaid pays for about 41% of births in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Jacqueline Carrizo, a doula assigned to Aquino through the Emme Coalition, played an important role in Aquino’s recovery. Aquino said she couldn’t have imagined going through such a “dark time alone.” With Carrizo’s support, “I could make it,” she said.
Genetic and environmental factors, or a past mental health disorder, can increase the risk of depression or anxiety during pregnancy. But mood disorders can happen to anyone.
Teresa Martinez, 30, of Price, Utah, had struggled with anxiety and infertility for years before she conceived her first child. The joy and relief of giving birth to her son in 2012 were short-lived.
Without warning, “a dark cloud came over me,” she said.
Martinez was afraid to tell her husband. “As a woman, you feel so much pressure and you don’t want that stigma of not being a good mom,” she said.
In recent years, programs around the country have started to help doctors recognize mothers’ mood disorders and learn how to help them before any harm is done.
One of the most successful is the Massachusetts Child Psychiatry Access Program for Moms, which began a decade ago and has since spread to 29 states. The program, supported by federal and state funding, provides tools and training for physicians and other providers to screen and identify disorders, triage patients, and offer treatment options.
But the expansion of maternal mental health programs is taking place amid sparse resources in much of rural America. Many programs across the country have run out of money.
The federal task force proposed that Congress fund and create consultation programs similar to the one in Massachusetts, but not to replace the ones already in place, said Burkhard.
In April, Missouri became the latest state to adopt the Massachusetts model. Women on Medicaid in Missouri are 10 times as likely to die within one year of pregnancy as those with private insurance. From 2018 through 2020, an average of 70 Missouri women died each year while pregnant or within one year of giving birth, according to state government statistics.
Wendy Ell, executive director of the Maternal Health Access Project in Missouri, called her service a “lifesaving resource” that is free and easy to access for any health care provider in the state who sees patients in the perinatal period.
About 50 health care providers have signed up for Ell’s program since it began. Within 30 minutes of a request, the providers can consult over the phone with one of three perinatal psychiatrists. But while the doctors can get help from the psychiatrists, mental health resources for patients are not as readily available.
The task force called for federal funding to train more mental health providers and place them in high-need areas like Missouri. The task force also recommended training and certifying a more diverse workforce of community mental health workers, patient navigators, doulas, and peer support specialists in areas where they are most needed.
A new voluntary curriculum in reproductive psychiatry is designed to help psychiatry residents, fellows, and mental health practitioners who may have little or no training or education about the management of psychiatric illness in the perinatal period. A small study found that the curriculum significantly improved psychiatrists’ ability to treat perinatal women with mental illness, said Standeven, who contributed to the training program and is one of the study’s authors.
Nancy Byatt, a perinatal psychiatrist at the University of Massachusetts Chan School of Medicine who led the launch of the Massachusetts Child Psychiatry Access Program for Moms in 2014, said there is still a lot of work to do.
“I think that the most important thing is that we have made a lot of progress and, in that sense, I am kind of hopeful,” Byatt said.
Cheryl Platzman Weinstock’s reporting is supported by a grant from the National Institute for Health Care Management Foundation.
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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Can You Be Fat AND Fit?
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The short answer is “yes“.
And as for what that means for your heart and/or all-cause mortality risk: it’s just as good as being fit at a smaller size, and furthermore, it’s better than being less fit at a smaller size.
Here’s the longer answer:
The science
A research team did a systematic review looking at multiple large cohort studies examining the associations between:
- Cardiorespiratory fitness and cardiovascular disease risk
- Cardiorespiratory fitness and all-cause mortality
- BMI and cardiovascular disease risk
- BMI and all-cause mortality
However, they also took this further, and tabulated the data such that they could also establish the cardiovascular disease mortality risk and all-cause mortality risk of:
- Unfit people with “normal” BMI
- Unfit people with “overweight” BMI
- Unfit people with “obese” BMI
- Fit people with “normal” BMI
- Fit people with “overweight” BMI
- Fit people with “obese” BMI
Before we move on, let’s note for the record that BMI is a woeful system in any case, for enough reasons to fill a whole article:
Now, with that in mind, let’s get to the results:
What they found
For cardiovascular disease mortality risk of unfit people specifically, compared to fit people of “normal” BMI:
- Unfit people with “normal” BMI: 2.04x higher risk.
- Unfit people with “overweight” BMI: 2.58x higher risk.
- Unfit people with “obese” BMI: 3.35x higher risk
So here we can see that if you are unfit, then being heavier will indeed increase your CVD mortality risk.
For all-cause mortality risk of unfit people specifically, compared to fit people of “normal” BMI:
- Unfit people with “normal” BMI: 1.92x higher risk.
- Unfit people with “overweight” BMI: 1.82x higher risk.
- Unfit people with “obese” BMI: 2.04x higher risk
This time we see that if you are unfit, then being heavier or lighter than “overweight” will increase your all-cause mortality risk.
So, what about if you are fit? Then being heavier or lighter made no significant difference to either CVD mortality risk or all-cause mortality risk.
Fit individuals, regardless of weight category (normal, overweight, or obese), had significantly lower mortality risks compared to unfit individuals in any weight category.
Note: not just “compared to unfit individuals in their weight category”, but compared to unfit individuals in any weight category.
In other words, if you are obese and have good cardiorespiratory fitness, you will (on average) live longer than an unfit person with “normal” BMI.
You can find the paper itself here, if you want to examine the data and/or method:
Cardiorespiratory fitness, body mass index and mortality: a systematic review and meta-analysis
Ok, so how do I improve the kind of fitness that they measured?
They based their cardiorespiratory fitness on VO2 Max, which scientific consensus holds to be a good measure of how efficiently your body can use oxygen—thus depending on your heart and lungs being healthy.
If you use a fitness tracker that tracks your exercise and your heart rate, it will estimate your VO2 Max for you—to truly measure the VO2 Max itself directly, you’ll need a lot more equipment; basically, access to a lab that tests this. But the estimates are fairly accurate, and so good enough for most personal purposes that aren’t hard-science research.
Next, you’ll want to do this:
53 Studies Later: The Best Way to Improve VO2 Max
Take care!
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8 Critical Signs Of Blood Clots That You Shouldn’t Ignore
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Blood clots can form as part of deep vein thrombosis or for other reasons; wherever they form (unless they are just doing their job healing a wound) they can cause problems. But how to know what’s going on inside our body?
Telltale signs
Our usual medical/legal disclaimer applies here, and we are not doctors, let alone your doctors, and even if we were we couldn’t diagnose from afar… But for educational purposes, here are the eight signs from the video:
- Swelling: especially if only on one leg (assuming you have no injury to account for it), which may feel tight and uncomfortable
- Warmness: does the area warmer to the touch? This may be because of the body’s inflammatory response trying to deal with a blood clot
- Tenderness: again, caused by the inflammation in response to the clot
- Discolored skin: it could be reddish, or bruise-like. This could be patchy or spread over a larger area, because of a clot blocking the flow of blood
- Shortness of breath: if a clot makes it to the lungs, it can cause extra problems there (pulmonary embolism), and shortness of breath is the first sign of this
- Coughing up blood: less common than the above but a much more serious sign; get thee to a hospital
- Chest pain: a sharp or stabbing pain, in particular. The pain may worsen with deep breaths or coughing. Again, seek medical attention.
For more on recognizing these signs (including helpful visuals), and more on what to do about them and how to avoid them in the first place, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Further reading
You might like to read:
Dietary Changes for Artery Health
Take care!
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Waist Size Worries: Age-Appropriate Solutions
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It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!
Have a question or a request? You can always hit “reply” to any of our emails, or use the feedback widget at the bottom!
In cases where we’ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future too—there’s always more to say!
As ever: if the question/request can be answered briefly, we’ll do it here in our Q&A Thursday edition. If not, we’ll make a main feature of it shortly afterwards!
So, no question/request too big or small
❝My BMI is fine, but my waist is too big. What do I do about that? I am 5′ 5″ tall and 128 pounds and 72 years old.❞
It’s hard to say without knowing about your lifestyle (and hormones, for that matter)! But, extra weight around the middle in particular is often correlated with high levels of cortisol, so you might find this of benefit:
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