Lemon Balm For Stressful Times And More
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Balm For The Mind: In More Ways Than One!
Lemon balm(Melissa officinalis) is quite unrelated to lemons, and is actually a closer relative to mint. It does have a lemony fragrance, though!
You’ll find it in a lot of relaxing/sleepy preparations, so…
What does the science say?
Relaxation
Lemon balm has indeed been found to be a potent anti-stress herb. Laboratories that need to test anything to do with stress generally create that stress in one of two main ways:
- If it’s not humans: a forced swimming test that’s a lot like waterboarding
- If it is humans: cognitive tests completed under time-pressure while multitasking
Consequently, studies that have set out to examine lemon balm’s anti-stress potential in humans, have often ended up also highlighting its potential as a cognitive enhancer, like this one in which…
❝Both active lemon balm treatments were generally associated with improvements in mood and/or cognitive performance❞
~ Dr. Anastasia Ossoukhova et al.
Read in full: Anti-Stress Effects of Lemon Balm-Containing Foods
And this one, which found…
❝The results showed that the 600-mg dose of Melissa ameliorated the negative mood effects of the DISS, with significantly increased self-ratings of calmness and reduced self-ratings of alertness.
In addition, a significant increase in the speed of mathematical processing, with no reduction in accuracy, was observed after ingestion of the 300-mg dose.❞
The appropriately named “DISS” is the Defined Intensity Stress Simulation we talked about.
Sleep
There’s a lot less research for lemon balm’s properties in this regard than for stress/anxiety, and it’s probably because sleep studies are much more expensive than stress studies.
It’s not for a lack of popular academic interest—for example, typing “Melissa officinalis” into PubMed (the vast library of studies we often cite from) autosuggests “Melissa officinalis sleep”. But alas, autosuggestions do not Randomized Controlled Trials make.
There are some, but they’re often small, old, and combined with other things, like this one:
This is interesting, because generally speaking there is little to no evidence that valerian actually helps sleep, so if this mixture worked, we might reasonably assume it was because of the lemon balm—but there’s an outside chance it could be that it only works in the presence of valerian (unlikely, but in science we must consider all possibilities).
Beyond that, we just have meta-reviews to work from, like this one that noted:
❝M. officinalis contains several phytochemicals such as phenolic acids, flavonoids, terpenoids, and many others at the basis of its pharmacological activities. Indeed, the plant can have antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, antispasmodic, antimicrobial, neuroprotective, nephroprotective, antinociceptive effects.
Given its consolidated use, M. officinalis has also been experimented with clinical settings, demonstrating interesting properties against different human diseases, such as anxiety, sleeping difficulties, palpitation, hypertension, depression, dementia, infantile colic, bruxism, metabolic problems, Alzheimer’s disease, and sexual disorders. ❞
You see why we don’t try to cover everything here, by the way!
But if you want to read this one in full, you can, at:
An Updated Review on The Properties of Melissa officinalis L.: Not Exclusively Anti-anxiety
Is it safe?
Lemon balm is generally recognized as safe, and/but please check with your doctor/pharmacist in case of any contraindications due to medicines you may be on or conditions you may have.
Want to try some?
We don’t sell it, but here for your convenience is an example product on Amazon
Want to know your other options?
You might like our previous main features:
What Teas To Drink Before Bed (By Science!)
and
Safe Effective Sleep Aids For Seniors
Enjoy!
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The Four Pillar Plan – by Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
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Dr. Rangan Chatterjee, a medical doctor, felt frustrated with how many doctors in his field focus on treating the symptoms of disease, rather than the cause. Sometimes, of course, treating the symptom is necessary too! But neglecting the cause is a recipe for long-term woes.
What he does differently is take lifestyle as a foundation, and even that, he does differently than many authors on the topic. How so, you may wonder?
Rather than look first at exercise and diet, he starts with “relax”. His rationale is reasonable: diving straight in with marathon training or a whole new diet plan can be unsustainable without this as a foundation to fall back on.
Many sources look first at exercise (because it can be a very simple “prescription”) before diet (often more complex)… but how does one exercise well with the wrong fuel in the tank? So Dr. Chatterjee’s titular “Four Pillars” come in the following order:
- Relax
- Eat
- Move
- Sleep
He also goes for “move” rather than “exercise” as the focus here is more on minimizing time spent sitting, and thus involving a lot of much more frequent gentle activities… rather than intensive training programs and the like.
And as for sleep? Yes, that comes last because—no matter how important it is—the other things are easier to directly control. After all, one can improve conditions for sleep, but one cannot simply choose to sleep better! So with the other three things covered first, good sleep is the fourth and final thing to fall into place.
All in all, this is a great book to cut through the catch-22 problem of lifestyle factors negatively impacting each other.
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Some women’s breasts can’t make enough milk, and the effects can be devastating
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Many new mothers worry about their milk supply. For some, support from a breastfeeding counsellor or lactation consultant helps.
Others cannot make enough milk no matter how hard they try. These are women whose breasts are not physically capable of producing enough milk.
Our recently published research gives us clues about breast features that might make it difficult for some women to produce enough milk. Another of our studies shows the devastating consequences for women who dream of breastfeeding but find they cannot.
Some breasts just don’t develop
Unlike other organs, breasts are not fully developed at birth. There are key developmental stages as an embryo, then again during puberty and pregnancy.
At birth, the breast consists of a simple network of ducts. Usually during puberty, the glandular (milk-making) tissue part of the breast begins to develop and the ductal network expands. Then typically, further growth of the ductal network and glandular tissue during pregnancy prepares the breast for lactation.
But our online survey of women who report low milk supply gives us clues to anomalies in how some women’s breasts develop.
We’re not talking about women with small breasts, but women whose glandular tissue (shown in this diagram as “lobules”) is underdeveloped and have a condition called breast hypoplasia.
Sometimes not enough glandular tissue, shown here as lobules, develop.
Tsuyna/ShutterstockWe don’t know how common this is. But it has been linked with lower rates of exclusive breastfeeding.
We also don’t know what causes it, with much of the research conducted in animals and not humans.
However, certain health conditions have been associated with it, including polycystic ovary syndrome and other endocrine (hormonal) conditions. A high body-mass index around the time of puberty may be another indicator.
Could I have breast hypoplasia?
Our survey and other research give clues about who may have breast hypoplasia.
But it’s important to note these characteristics are indicators and do not mean women exhibiting them will definitely be unable to exclusively breastfeed.
Indicators include:
- a wider than usual gap between the breasts
- tubular-shaped (rather than round) breasts
- asymmetric breasts (where the breasts are different sizes or shapes)
- lack of breast growth in pregnancy
- a delay in or absence of breast fullness in the days after giving birth
In our survey, 72% of women with low milk supply had breasts that did not change appearance during pregnancy, and about 70% reported at least one irregular-shaped breast.
The effects
Mothers with low milk supply – whether or not they have breast hyoplasia or some other condition that limits their ability to produce enough milk – report a range of emotions.
Research, including our own, shows this ranges from frustration, confusion and surprise to intense or profound feelings of failure, guilt, grief and despair.
Some mothers describe “breastfeeding grief” – a prolonged sense of loss or failure, due to being unable to connect with and nourish their baby through breastfeeding in the way they had hoped.
These feelings of failure, guilt, grief and despair can trigger symptoms of anxiety and depression for some women.
Feelings of failure, guilt, grief and despair were common.
Bricolage/ShutterstockOne woman told us:
[I became] so angry and upset with my body for not being able to produce enough milk.
Many women’s emotions intensified when they discovered that despite all their hard work, they were still unable to breastfeed their babies as planned. A few women described reaching their “breaking point”, and their experience felt “like death”, “the worst day of [my] life” or “hell”.
One participant told us:
I finally learned that ‘all women make enough milk’ was a lie. No amount of education or determination would make my breasts work. I felt deceived and let down by all my medical providers. How dare they have no answers for me when I desperately just wanted to feed my child naturally.
Others told us how they learned to accept their situation. Some women said they were relieved their infant was “finally satisfied” when they began supplementing with formula. One resolved to:
prioritise time with [my] baby over pumping for such little amounts.
Where to go for help
If you are struggling with low milk supply, it can help to see a lactation consultant for support and to determine the possible cause.
This will involve helping you try different strategies, such as optimising positioning and attachment during breastfeeding, or breastfeeding/expressing more frequently. You may need to consider taking a medication, such as domperidone, to see if your supply increases.
If these strategies do not help, there may be an underlying reason why you can’t make enough milk, such as insufficient glandular tissue (a confirmed inability to make a full supply due to breast hypoplasia).
Even if you have breast hypoplasia, you can still breastfeed by giving your baby extra milk (donor milk or formula) via a bottle or using a supplementer (which involves delivering milk at the breast via a tube linked to a bottle).
More resources
The following websites offer further information and support:
- Australian Breastfeeding Association
- Lactation Consultants of Australia and New Zealand
- Royal Women’s Hospital, Melbourne
- Supply Line Breastfeeders Support Group of Australia Facebook support group
- IGT And Low Milk Supply Support Group Facebook support group
- Breastfeeding Medicine Network Australia/New Zealand
- Supporting breastfeeding grief (a collection of resources).
Shannon Bennetts, a research fellow at La Trobe University, contributed to this article.
Renee Kam, PhD candidate and research officer, La Trobe University and Lisa Amir, Professor in Breastfeeding Research, La Trobe University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Eat to Your Heart’s Content – by Dr. Sat Bains
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Making food heart-healthy and tasty is a challenge that vexes many, but it doesn’t have to be so difficult.
Dr. Sat Bains, a professional chef with multiple Michelin stars to his name, is an expert on “tasty”, and after surviving a heart attack himself, he’s become an expert on “heart-healthy” since then.
The book contains not only the recipes (of which there are 68, by the way), but also large sections of explanation of what makes various ingredients or methods heart-healthy or heart-unhealthy.
There’s science in there too, and these sections were written under the guidance of Dr. Neil Williams, a lecturer in physiology and nutrition.
You may be wondering as to why the author himself has a doctorate too; in fact he has three, none of which are relevant:
- Doctor of Arts
- Doctor of Laws
- Doctor of Hospitality (Honorary)
…but we prefix “Dr.” when people are that and he is that. The expertise we’re getting here though is really his culinary skill and extracurricular heart-healthy learning, plus Dr. Williams’ actual professional health guidance.
Bottom line: if you’d like heart-healthy recipes with restaurant-level glamour, this book is a fine choice.
Click here to check out Eat To Your Heart’s Content, and look after yours!
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Honeydew vs Cantaloupe – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing honeydew to cantaloupe, we picked the cantaloupe.
Why?
In terms of macros, there’s not a lot between them—they’re both mostly water. Nominally, honeydew has more carbs while cantaloupe has more fiber and protein, but the differences are very small. So, a very slight win for cantaloupe.
Looking at vitamins: honeydew has slightly more of vitamins B5 and B6 (so, the vitamins that are in pretty much everything), while cantaloupe has a more of vitamins A, B1, B2, B3, C, and E (especially notably 67x more vitamin A, whence its color). A more convincing win for cantaloupe.
The minerals category is even more polarized: honeydew has more selenium (and for what it’s worth, more sodium too, though that’s not usually a plus for most of us in the industrialized world), while cantaloupe has more calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, and zinc. An overwhelming win for cantaloupe.
No surprises: adding up the slight win for cantaloupe, the convincing win for cantaloupe, and the overwhelming win for cantaloupe, makes cantaloupe the overall best pick here.
Enjoy!
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
From Apples to Bees, and High-Fructose Cs: Which Sugars Are Healthier, And Which Are Just The Same?
Take care!
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How Much Weight Gain Do Antidepressants Cause?
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There’s a lot of talk in the news lately about antidepressants and weight gain, so let’s look at some numbers.
Here’s a study from July 2024 that compared the weight gain of eight popular antidepressants, and pop-science outlets have reported it with such snippets as:
❝Bupropion users were approximately 15–20% less likely to gain a clinically significant amount of weight than those taking the most common medication, sertraline.
The researchers considered weight gain of 5% or more as clinically significant.❞
Read in full: Study compares weight gain across eight common antidepressants
At this point, you might (especially if you or a loved one is on sertraline) be grabbing a calculator and seeing what 5% of your weight is, and might be concerned at the implications.
However, this is a little like if, in our This or That section, we were to report that food A has 17x more potassium than food B, without mentioning that food A has 0.01mg/100g and food A has 0.17mg/100g, and thus that, while technically “17x more”, the difference is trivial.
As a quick aside: we do, by the way, try to note when things like that might skew the stats and either wipe them out by not mentioning that they contain potassium at all (as they barely do), or if it’s a bit more, describing them as being “approximately equal in potassium” or else draw attention to the “but the amounts are trivial in both cases”.
Back to the antidepressants: in fact, for those two antidepressants compared in that snippet, the truth is (when we go looking in the actual research paper and the data within):
- sertraline was associated with an average weight change of +1.5kg (just over 3lb) over the course of 24 months
- bupropion was associated with an average weight change of +0.5kg (just under 1lb) over the course of 24 months
Sertraline being the most weight-gain-inducing of the 8 drugs compared, and bupropion being the least, this means (with them both having fairly even curves):
- sertraline being associated with an average weight change of 0.06kg (about 2oz) per month
- bupropion being associated with an average weight change of 0.02kg (less than 1oz) per month
For all eight, see the chart here in the paper itself:
Medication-Induced Weight Change Across Common Antidepressant Treatments ← we’ve made the link go straight to the chart, for your convenience, but you can also read the whole paper there
While you’re there, you might also see that for some antidepressants, such as duloxetine, fluoxetine, and venlafaxine, there’s an initial weight gain, but then it clearly hits a plateau and weight ceases to change after a certain point, which is worth considering too, since “you’ll gain a little bit of weight and then stay at that weight” is a very different prognosis from “you’ll gain a bit of weight and keep gaining it forever until you die”.
But then again, consider this:
Most adults will gain half a kilo this year – and every year. Here’s how to stop “weight creep”
That’s more weight gain than one gets on sertraline, the most weight-gain-inducing antidepressant tested!
What about over longer-term use?
Here’s a more recent study (December 2024) that looked at antidepressant use over 6 years, and found an average 2% weight gain over those 6 years, but it didn’t break it down by antidepressant type, sadly:
…which seems like quite a wasted opportunity, since some of the medications considered are very different, working on completely different systems (for example, SSRIs vs NDRIs, working on serotonin or norepinephrine+dopamine, respectively—see our Neurotransmitter Cheatsheet for more about those) and having often quite different side effects. Nevertheless, the study (despite collecting this information) didn’t then tabulate the data, and instead considered them all to be the same factor, “antidepressants”.
What this study did do that was useful was included a control group not on antidepressants so we know that on average:
- never-users of antidepressants gained an average of 1% of their bodyweight over those 6 years
- users-and-desisters of antidepressants gained an average of 1.8% of their bodyweight over those 6 years*
- continuing users of antidepressants gained an average of 2% of their bodyweight over those 6 years
*for this group, weight gain was a commonly cited reason for stopping taking the antidepressants in question
Writer’s anecdote: I’ve been on mirtazapine (a presynaptic alpha2-adrenoreceptor antagonist which increases central noradrenergic and serotonergic neurotransmission) for some years and can only say that I wish I’d been on it decades previously. I requested mirtazapine specifically, because I’m me and I know my stuff and considered it would most likely be by far the best fit for me out of the options available. Starting at a low dose, the only meaningful side effect was mild sedation (expected, and associated only with low-dose use); increasing after a couple of weeks to a moderate dose, that side effect disappeared and now the only remaining side effect is a slight dryness of the mouth, which is fine, as it ensures I remember to stay hydrated 🙂 anyway, my weight hasn’t changed (beyond very small temporary fluctuations) in the time I’ve been on mirtazapine. Disclaimer: the plural of anecdote is not data, and I can only speak for my own experience, and am not making any particular recommendation here. Your personal physiology will be different from mine, and may respond well or badly to any given treatment according to your own physiology.
Further considerations
This is touched on in the “Discussion” section of the latter paper (so do check that out if you want all the details, more than we can reasonably put here), but there are other factors to consider, for example:
- whether people were underweight/healthy weight/overweight at baseline (sometimes, a weight gain can be a good thing, recovering from an illness, and in the case of the illness that is depression, weight can swing either way)
- antidepressants changing eating and exercise habits (generally speaking: more likely to eat more and exercise more)
- body composition! How did they not cover this (neither paper did)?! Muscle weighs more than fat, and improvements in exercise can result in an increase in muscle and thus an increase in overall weight.
As researchers like to say, “this highlights the need for more high-quality studies to look into…” (and then the various things that went unexamined).
Want to know more?
Check out our previous main feature:
Antidepressants: Personalization Is Key!
Take care!
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High Histamine Foods To Avoid (And Low Histamine Foods To Eat Instead)
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Nour Zibdeh is an Integrative and Functional Dietician, and she helps people overcome food intolerances. Today, it’s about getting rid of the underdiagnosed condition that is histamine intolerance, by first eliminating the triggers, and then not getting stuck on the low-histamine diet
The recommendations
High histamine foods to avoid include:
- Alcohol (all types)
- Fermented foods—normally great for the gut, but bad in this case
- That includes most cheeses and yogurts
- Aged, cured, or otherwise preserved meat
- Some plants, e.g. tomato, spinach, eggplant, banana, avocado. Again, normally all great, but not in this case.
Low histamine foods to eat include:
- Fruits and vegetables not mentioned above
- Minimally processed meat and fish, either fresh from the butcher/fishmonger, or frozen (not from the chilled food section of the supermarket), and eaten the same day they were purchased or defrosted, because otherwise histamine builds up over time (and quite quickly)
- Grains, but she recommends skipping gluten, given the high likelihood of a comorbid gluten intolerance. So instead she recommends for example quinoa, oats, rice, buckwheat, millet, etc.
For more about these (and more examples), as well as how to then phase safely off the low histamine diet, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Further reading
Food intolerances often gang up on a person (i.e., comorbidity is high), so you might also like to read about:
- Gluten: What’s The Truth?
- Fiber For FODMAP-Avoiders
- Foods For Managing Hypothyroidism (incl. Hashimoto’s)
- Crohn’s, Food Intolerances, & More
Take care!
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