Millet vs Rye – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing millet to rye, we picked the rye.
Why?
In terms of macros, they’re about equal on protein, and rye has more carbs and fiber, the ratio of which give it the lower glycemic index, so we say rye wins this category.
In the category of vitamins, millet has more of vitamins B1, B2, B6, and B9, while rye has more of vitamins A, B5, E, and K. Notionally, that’s a 4:4 tie, though rye’s margins of difference are an order of magnitude greater, so we say rye takes a marginal victory on this one.
When it comes to minerals, there’s nothing to debate here: millet has more copper, while rye has more calcium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, and zinc. An easy win for rye on this one.
Adding up the sections gives the overall win to rye, but there is one other thing worth mentioning: millet is naturally gluten-free, but rye is not, so if you are avoiding gluten for any reason, you’ll want to pick the millet in this case.
See also: Gluten: What’s The Truth?
Aside from that, by all means enjoy either or both, in moderation! Diversity is good.
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
Grains: Bread Of Life, Or Cereal Killer?
Enjoy!
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Terminal lucidity: why do loved ones with dementia sometimes ‘come back’ before death?
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Dementia is often described as “the long goodbye”. Although the person is still alive, dementia slowly and irreversibly chips away at their memories and the qualities that make someone “them”.
Dementia eventually takes away the person’s ability to communicate, eat and drink on their own, understand where they are, and recognise family members.
Since as early as the 19th century, stories from loved ones, caregivers and health-care workers have described some people with dementia suddenly becoming lucid. They have described the person engaging in meaningful conversation, sharing memories that were assumed to have been lost, making jokes, and even requesting meals.
It is estimated 43% of people who experience this brief lucidity die within 24 hours, and 84% within a week.
Why does this happen?
Terminal lucidity or paradoxical lucidity?
In 2009, researchers Michael Nahm and Bruce Greyson coined the term “terminal lucidity”, since these lucid episodes often occurred shortly before death.
But not all lucid episodes indicate death is imminent. One study found many people with advanced dementia will show brief glimmers of their old selves more than six months before death.
Lucidity has also been reported in other conditions that affect the brain or thinking skills, such as meningitis, schizophrenia, and in people with brain tumours or who have sustained a brain injury.
Moments of lucidity that do not necessarily indicate death are sometimes called paradoxical lucidity. It is considered paradoxical as it defies the expected course of neurodegenerative diseases such as dementia.
But it’s important to note these episodes of lucidity are temporary and sadly do not represent a reversal of neurodegenerative disease.
Sadly, these episodes of lucidity are only temporary. Pexels/Kampus Production Why does terminal lucidity happen?
Scientists have struggled to explain why terminal lucidity happens. Some episodes of lucidity have been reported to occur in the presence of loved ones. Others have reported that music can sometimes improve lucidity. But many episodes of lucidity do not have a distinct trigger.
A research team from New York University speculated that changes in brain activity before death may cause terminal lucidity. But this doesn’t fully explain why people suddenly recover abilities that were assumed to be lost.
Paradoxical and terminal lucidity are also very difficult to study. Not everyone with advanced dementia will experience episodes of lucidity before death. Lucid episodes are also unpredictable and typically occur without a particular trigger.
And as terminal lucidity can be a joyous time for those who witness the episode, it would be unethical for scientists to use that time to conduct their research. At the time of death, it’s also difficult for scientists to interview caregivers about any lucid moments that may have occurred.
Explanations for terminal lucidity extend beyond science. These moments of mental clarity may be a way for the dying person to say final goodbyes, gain closure before death, and reconnect with family and friends. Some believe episodes of terminal lucidity are representative of the person connecting with an afterlife.
Why is it important to know about terminal lucidity?
People can have a variety of reactions to seeing terminal lucidity in a person with advanced dementia. While some will experience it as being peaceful and bittersweet, others may find it deeply confusing and upsetting. There may also be an urge to modify care plans and request lifesaving measures for the dying person.
Being aware of terminal lucidity can help loved ones understand it is part of the dying process, acknowledge the person with dementia will not recover, and allow them to make the most of the time they have with the lucid person.
For those who witness it, terminal lucidity can be a final, precious opportunity to reconnect with the person that existed before dementia took hold and the “long goodbye” began.
Yen Ying Lim, Associate Professor, Turner Institute for Brain and Mental Health, Monash University and Diny Thomson, PhD (Clinical Neuropsychology) Candidate and Provisional Psychologist, Monash University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Banana vs Goji Berries – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing banana to goji berries, we picked the goji berries.
Why?
Both are great! But…
In terms of macros, goji berries have much more fiber, carbs, and protein, thus making it the most nutrient-dense option, as we might expect from a dried fruit being compared to a non-dried fruit—since the non-dried fruit has water weight that the dried fruit doesn’t, its percentages of other things will be proportionally lower, because the percentages must still add up to 100%, and if 75% is water (as is the case for bananas, compared to goji berries’ 7.5% water), then that only leaves 25% to work with, while goji berries have 92.5% to work with. In short, an easy and expected win for goji berries.
In the category of vitamins, bananas have more of vitamin B6, while goji berries have more of vitamins A, B1, B3, B5, B9, C, E, and K. A clear win for goji berries.
When it comes to minerals, bananas are not higher in any minerals, while goji berries have more calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, and zinc. Another easy win for goji berries.
As for polyphenols, you may well imagine that the brightly-colored bitter-tasting berries have more, and you’d be right; you can read more about the exciting phytochemical properties of goji berries in the links below.
Meanwhile, adding up the sections show a clear overall win for goji berries, but by all means enjoy either or both; diversity is good!
Want to learn more?
You might like:
- Goji Berries: Which Benefits Do They Really Have? ← many!
- The Sugary Food That Lowers Blood Sugars ← it’s goji berries!
Enjoy!
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Is Your Diet Causing You Hair Loss?
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When it comes to diet and hair health, most people know to get vitamin something, consume a mineral or so (usually zinc), and skip the polonium.
But, there’s a little more to it than most people realize:
Foods For & Against
Researchers (Dr. Beatriz Teixeira et al.) investigated, by means of a huge literature review (taking data from 17 observational studies, with 613,320 participants, of whom, mostly women), what things actually matter the most, for and against.
First, what not to do:
Foods and drinks that worsen hair loss include sugar-sweetened beverages, and even more strongly, alcohol:
- Sugar spikes cause inflammation that disrupts hair cycles
- Alcohol contributes in a whole stack of ways, both directly and indirectly, including:
- nutrient deficiencies (hypothesis: due to people drinking a higher portion of their calories in alcohol rather than eating nutritious food)
- poor absorption of nutrients (because alcohol causes the body to do almost everything worse, and especially messes with the gut, and not in a good way—one might struggle to spell “dysbiosis” when one’s had a tipple or two too many, but suffice it to say, alcohol causes the gut microbiome to swing wildly in the direction of Bad Things™, including C. albicans, also called simply Candida, the fungus which puts its roots through your intestinal walls, making holes there giving you leaky gut syndrome, and also interfaces with your nervous system via its roots that escape the gut and access the vagus nerve, and thus gives you cravings for more alcohol/sugar/flour, by sending false signals up to your brain) (we’re not exaggerating, check out the papers we cited in the relevant section of this article on gut health)
- liver stress (because that’s where alcohol is metabolized, and our liver is not supposed to have to do that much work)
- poor sleep (because of how it disrupts brain function, including while sleeping, at which time the brain’s job is normally “restore this” and it can’t do that correctly while impaired)
- systemic inflammation (because of the combination of the above plus the fact that the alcohol itself is toxic, and even when metabolized, produces sugars that also worsen inflammation)
Now, some things most people know about:
Zinc and biotin (vitamin B7) deficiencies can cause thinning; adults need 30 μg vitamin B7 daily from foods like seeds, nuts, and sweet potatoes (to pick some out from the paper; there are plenty more options, of course). The researchers concluded that beyond that, extra supplementation is unlikely to help without deficiency.
Now, into lesser-known things:
Insufficient protein can trigger shedding; the researchers suggest about 0.5 g per pound of body weight daily, which is a very normal recommendation. We wrote about this more here: How Much Protein Do We Need, Really?
On which note, the researchers also tentatively recommend considering collagen, but note that while it seems entirely reasonable that it should help, the actual science is mostly not there for it yet (i.e. mostly hasn’t been done). Most collagen RCTs have been about skin health or joint health; less about hair. For more on that though, do see our research review on this: We Are Such Stuff As Fish Are Made Of
And if you are vegetarian/vegan? Worry not, because you can simply enjoy The Best Foods For Collagen Production, picking the vegetarian/vegan options in each category as applicable.
And as for other supplements of note:
- Persimmon leaf: linked to better hair density and thickness through antioxidants like quercetin that improve scalp blood flow; available as tea or supplements.
- Pumpkin seed oil: in a study of men with male pattern baldness, 400 mg daily for 24 weeks led to greater growth, likely by reducing DHT, the hair-thinning hormone (it does more things than that, but that’s what’s relevant here—actually, while we’re on this, let’s note for the record that while DHT thins head hair, it increases body hair, which for many people isn’t a combination they’re hoping for)
- Vitamin D: five studies found higher levels protective against hair loss; a suggested dose is 2,000 IU daily, though excess carries toxicity risk, so do keep within the recommended bounds (and double-check what other supplements have “plus vitamin D” tagged on, and/or foods “fortified with vitamin D”).
- Iron: supplementation improved growth in women; absorption is best when paired with vitamin C; dietary sources include spinach, lentils, and almonds. See also: The Iron Dilemma: Factors To Consider
Finally, in the category of specific foods that were mostly strongly associated with healthy hair growth, the researchers highlighted:
- Cruciferous vegetables (e.g. broccoli, cauliflower, kale, sprouts, etc) likely due to antioxidant and anti-inflammatory phytochemicals, and especially sulforaphane.
- Soy products (especially edamame & tofu, i.e., the least-processed of soy products) likely due to the top-tier amino acid profile, plus that while the phytoestrogens can’t be used as estrogens in the body (not compatible), they can be broken down and the “ingredients” used to produce your own estrogen, if (and only* if) you have working ovaries.
- *Ok, so that was technically a lie; if you have working testes, then these can and do also produce estrogen, but in truly truly tiny amounts, and more than counterbalanced by the testosterone they produce. We wrote a bit about the science of ovaries and testes doing each other’s jobs, here. So if you are a reader with working testes rather than ovaries, then be aware: you could not physically eat enough soy to cause them to crank out enough estrogen to make the slightest change to your hair or any other part of your body. So our original statement stands, for all practical purposes: soy products will only increase your E levels if you have working ovaries to produce the E in question.
You can read the paper in full, here: Assessing the relationship between dietary factors and hair health: A systematic review
Want to learn more?
If you want to get very serious about it, you might want to consider: Hair-Loss Remedies, By Science
And/or if you want to go a drug-free route but without relying solely on diet, then check out: Gentler Hair Health Options
Take care!
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Your Vitamins are Obsolete: The Vitamer Revolution – by Dr. Sheldon Zablow
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.
First, what this is not:a book to tell you “throw out your vitamins and just eat these foods”.
This book focuses mainly on two vitamins in which deficiencies are common especially as we get older: B9 and B12.
So, what does the title mean? It’s not so much that your vitamins are obsolete—that would imply that they were more useful previously, which is not the case. Rather, the most common forms of vitamins B9 and B12 provided in supplements are folic acid and cyanocobalamin, respectively, which as he demonstrates with extensive research to back up his claims, cannot be easily absorbed or used especially well.
About those vitamers: a vitamer is simply a form of a vitamin—most vitamins we need can arrive in a variety of forms. In the case of vitamins B9 and B12, he advocates for ditching vitamers folic acid and cyanocobalamin, cheap as they are, and springing for bioactive vitamers L-methylfolate, methylcobalamin, and adenosylcobalamin.
He also discusses (again, just as well-evidenced as the above things) why we might struggle to get enough from our diet after a certain age. For example, if trying to get these vitamins from meat, 50% of people over 50 cannot manufacture enough stomach acid to break down that protein to release the vitamins.
And as for methyl-B12 vitamers, you might expect you can get those from meat, and technically you can, but they don’t occur in all animals, just in one kind of animal. Specifically, the kind that has the largest brain-to-body ratio. However, eating the meat of this animal can result in protein folding errors in general and Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease in particular, so the author does not recommend eating humans, however nutritionally convenient that would be.
All this means that supplementation after a certain age really can be a sensible way to do it—but do it wisely, and pick the right vitamers.
The style of the book is informationally dense, but very readable even for a layperson provided one starts at the beginning and reads forwards, as otherwise one will find oneself in a mire of terms whose explanations one missed when they were first introduced.
Bottom line: if you are over 50 and/or have any known or suspected issues with vitamins B9 and/or B12, this book becomes very important reading.
Click here to check out Your Vitamins Are Obsolete, and get your body what it needs!
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Why Dangerous Amoebae Are Spreading In Water Supplies
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It’s not just the famous “brain-eating” amoeba, but yes, it is also that one too:
Naegleria fowleri et al.
First, let’s address the most dangerous species: Naegleria fowleri, often called the brain-eating amoeba, can cause a nearly always fatal brain infection when contaminated water enters the nose during activities such as swimming.
You may remember it from such outbreaks as:
Texas residents warned of tap water tainted with brain-eating microbe
Probably few people are swimming in tap water, but:
- Some will rinse their nose, as with a neti pot
- Humans have an unusual layout of internal cavities that allows connection between the nose and throat, so drinking it can still be an issue.
- You may be wondering whether amoeba can walk up the walls. The answer comes in two parts:
- Yes, though how easily will depend on the state of your mucus membrane
- If you lie down, then that “climb” is now a sideways walk
- You may be wondering whether amoeba can walk up the walls. The answer comes in two parts:
But my water is clean, right?
Mayyyyyybe, but it’s best to not count on it, especially not anymore. This is because climate change, aging water infrastructure, and patchy monitoring are all enabling heat-tolerant amoebae to spread into new regions and persist and even thrive in modern water systems.
It’s not just “heat tolerance”, though: these free-living amoebae can survive high temperatures, high pH, and chlorine concentrations that kill most microbes, making standard water treatment methods less effective.
However, it gets worse: amoebae can shelter bacteria and viruses inside their cells, protecting these pathogens from disinfection and contributing not only to their spread, but also to antibiotic resistance as well.
This method of hardy amoebae smuggling bacteria and viruses into your body is called the “Trojan horse effect”, and you can read about it here:
The rising threat of amoebae: a global public health challenge
…and, for that matter:
Scientists call for urgent action as dangerous amoebas spread globally
What’s the best way to be safe?
Filtering water that you get from some other source (e.g. the water supply that your local authority has done its best to purify and probably missed these amoebae) is, generally speaking, good.
Provided you change the filter regularly, of course.
Otherwise, after overusing a filter, at best it won’t be working, and at worst it’ll be adding in bacteria that have multiplied in the filter over however long you left it there.
You may be wondering: can water filters remove microplastics, and can they remove minerals?
The answer in both cases is: sometimes.
- For microplastics it depends on the filter size and the microplastic size (see our previous article for details on that).
- For minerals, it depends on the filter type. Check out:
The H2O Chronicles | 5 Water Filters That Remove Minerals
One other thing to think about: while most water filtration jugs are made of PFAS-free BPA-free plastics for obvious reasons, for greater peace of mind, you might consider investing in a glass filtration jug, like this one ← this is just one example product on Amazon; by all means shop around and find one you like
What about distilling water, you may wonder?
Distilled water is in principle the safest water anywhere, because you know that you’ve removed any nasties, including brain-eating amoebae et al.
However, it’s also devoid of nutrients, because you also removed any minerals it contained. Indeed, if you use a still, you’ll be accustomed to the build-up of these minerals (generally simplified and referenced as “limescale”, but it’s a whole collection of minerals). Furthermore, that loss of nutrients can be more than just a “something good is missing”, because having removed certain ions, that water could now potentially strip minerals from your teeth. In practice, however, you’d probably have to swill it excessively to cause this damage.
Nevertheless, if you have the misfortune of living somewhere like Flint, Michigan, then a water still may be a fair necessity of life. In other places, it can simply be useful to have in case of emergency, of course.
Here’s an example product on Amazon if you’d like to invest in a water still for such cases.
PS: distilled water is also tasteless, and is generally considered bad, tastewise, for making tea and coffee.
Ultimately, the question is how safe you want to be, and what you’re willing to sacrifice to assure that safety.
What about bottled water, you ask?
Not only is it not routinely monitored for such contaminants, but also, there is the unfortunate matter of what else it puts in, see for example:
There are “forever chemicals” in our drinking water. Should standards change to protect our health?
Want to learn more?
Check out:
Water’s Counterintuitive Properties
Take care!
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Brussels Sprouts vs Kale – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing Brussels sprouts to kale, we picked the kale.
Why?
In today’s battle of Brassica oleracea vs Brassica oleracea (these two plants today are the same species, just a different cultivar), there’s a clear winner when all’s said and done:
In terms of macros, there’s really nothing between them, so this round’s a tie. However…
In the category of vitamins, Brussels sprouts have more of vitamins B1 and B5, while kale has more of vitamins A, B2, B3, B6, B7, B9, C, E, and K, winning easily.
Looking at minerals next, Brussels sprouts have more selenium, while kale has more calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, and zinc, winning this round too.
In other considerations, both are abundant sources of polyphenols, but kale has more, especially kaempferol and quercetin, winning kale its third round in a row.
Adding up the sections makes for a clear overall win for kale, but by all means enjoy either or both, as diversity is best, and Brussels sprouts really are a superfood too; they just don’t look it when standing next to kale!
Want to learn more?
You might like:
- The Best Foods for Clear, Healthy Skin
- What Does Kaempferol Do, Anyway?
- Fight Inflammation & Protect Your Brain, With Quercetin
Enjoy!
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