Moringa Oleifera Against CVD, Diabetes, Alzheimer’s & Arsenic?
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The Healthiest Drumstick
Moringa oleifera is a tree, whose leaves and pods have medicinal properties (as well as simply being very high in nutrients). It’s also called the drumstick tree in English, but equally often it’s referred to simply as Moringa. It has enjoyed use in traditional medicine for thousands of years, and its many benefits have caught scientists’ attention more recently. For an overview before we begin, see:
Now, let’s break it down…
Anti-inflammatory
It is full of antioxidants, which we’ll come to shortly, and they have abundant anti-inflammatory effects. Research into these so far has mostly beennon-human animal studies or else in vitro, hence the guarded “potential” for now:
Potential anti-inflammatory phenolic glycosides from the medicinal plant Moringa oleifera fruits
Speaking of potential though, it has been found to also reduce neuroinflammation specifically, which is good, because not every anti-inflammatory agent does that:
Antioxidant
It was hard to find studies that talked about its antioxidant powers that didn’t also add “and this, and this, and this” because of all its knock-on benefits, for example:
❝The results indicate that this plant possesses antioxidant, hypolipidaemic and antiatherosclerotic activities and has therapeutic potential for the prevention of cardiovascular diseases.
These effects were at degrees comparable to those of simvastatin.❞
~ Dr. Pilaipark Chumark et al.
Likely a lot of its benefits in these regards come from the plant’s very high quercetin content, because quercetin does that too:
Quercetin reduces blood pressure in hypertensive subjects
For more about quercetin, you might like our previous main feature:
Fight Inflammation & Protect Your Brain, With Quercetin
Antidiabetic
It also has been found to lower fasting blood sugar levels by 13.5%:
Anti-arsenic?
We put a question mark there, because studies into this have only been done with non-human animals such as mice and rats so far, largely because there are not many human volunteers willing to sign up for arsenic poisoning (and no ethics board would pass it anyway).
However, as arsenic contamination in some foods (such as rice) is a big concern, this is very promising. Here are some example studies, with mice and rats respectively:
- Protective effects of Moringa oleifera Lam. leaves against arsenic-induced toxicity in mice
- Therapeutic effects of Moringa oleifera on arsenic-induced toxicity in rats
Is it safe?
A popular food product through parts of Africa and (especially) South & West Asia, it has a very good safety profile. Generally the only health-related criticism of it is that it contains some anti-nutrients (that hinder bioavailability of its nutrients), but the nutrients outweigh the antinutrients sufficiently to render this a trifling trivium.
In short: as ever, do check with your doctor/pharmacist to be sure, but in general terms, this is about as safe as most vegan whole foods; it just happens to also be something of a superfood, which puts it into the “nutraceutical” category. See also:
Review of the Safety and Efficacy of Moringa oleifera
Want to try some?
We don’t sell it, but here for your convenience is an example product on Amazon 😎
Enjoy!
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Only walking for exercise? Here’s how to get the most out of it
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We’re living longer than in previous generations, with one in eight elderly Australians now aged over 85. But the current gap between life expectancy (“lifespan”) and health-adjusted life expectancy (“healthspan”) is about ten years. This means many of us live with significant health problems in our later years.
To increase our healthspan, we need planned, structured and regular physical activity (or exercise). The World Health Organization recommends 150–300 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise – such as brisk walking, cycling and swimming – per week and muscle strengthening twice a week.
Yet few of us meet these recommendations. Only 10% meet the strength-training recommendations. Lack of time is one of the most common reasons.
Walking is cost-effective, doesn’t require any special equipment or training, and can be done with small pockets of time. Our preliminary research, published this week, shows there are ways to incorporate strength-training components into walking to improve your muscle strength and balance.
Why walking isn’t usually enough
Regular walking does not appear to work as muscle-strengthening exercise.
In contrast, exercises consisting of “eccentric” or muscle-lengthening contractions improve muscle strength, prevent muscle wasting and improve other functions such as balance and flexibility.
Typical eccentric contractions are seen, for example, when we sit on a chair slowly. The front thigh muscles lengthen with force generation.
When you sit down slowly on a chair, the front thigh muscles lengthen.
buritora/ShutterstockOur research
Our previous research found body-weight-based eccentric exercise training, such as sitting down on a chair slowly, improved lower limb muscle strength and balance in healthy older adults.
We also showed walking down stairs, with the front thigh muscles undergoing eccentric contractions, increased leg muscle strength and balance in older women more than walking up stairs. When climbing stairs, the front thigh muscles undergo “concentric” contractions, with the muscles shortening.
It can be difficult to find stairs or slopes suitable for eccentric exercises. But if they could be incorporated into daily walking, lower limb muscle strength and balance function could be improved.
This is where the idea of “eccentric walking” comes into play. This means inserting lunges in conventional walking, in addition to downstairs and downhill walking.
In our new research, published in the European Journal of Applied Physiology, we investigated the effects of eccentric walking on lower limb muscle strength and balance in 11 regular walkers aged 54 to 88 years.
The intervention period was 12 weeks. It consisted of four weeks of normal walking followed by eight weeks of eccentric walking.
The number of eccentric steps in the eccentric walking period gradually increased over eight weeks from 100 to 1,000 steps (including lunges, downhill and downstairs steps). Participants took a total of 3,900 eccentric steps over the eight-week eccentric walking period while the total number of steps was the same as the previous four weeks.
We measured the thickness of the participants’ front thigh muscles, muscle strength in their knee, their balance and endurance, including how many times they could go from a sitting position to standing in 30 seconds without using their arms. We took these measurements before the study started, at four weeks, after the conventional walking period, and at four and eight weeks into the eccentric walking period.
We also tested their cognitive function using a digit symbol-substitution test at the same time points of other tests. And we asked participants to complete a questionnaire relating to their activities of daily living, such as dressing and moving around at home.
Finally, we tested participants’ blood sugar, cholesterol levels and complement component 1q (C1q) concentrations, a potential marker of sarcopenia (muscle wasting with ageing).
Regular walking won’t contract your muscles in the same way as eccentric walking.
alexei_tm/ShutterstockWhat did we find?
We found no significant changes in any of the outcomes in the first four weeks when participants walked conventionally.
From week four to 12, we found significant improvements in muscle strength (19%), chair-stand ability (24%), balance (45%) and a cognitive function test (21%).
Serum C1q concentration decreased by 10% after the eccentric walking intervention, indicating participants’ muscles were effectively stimulated.
The sample size of the study was small, so we need larger and more comprehensive studies to verify our findings and investigate whether eccentric walking is effective for sedentary people, older people, how the different types of eccentric exercise compare and the potential cognitive and mental health benefits.
But, in the meantime, “eccentric walking” appears to be a beneficial exercise that will extend your healthspan. It may look a bit eccentric if we insert lunges while walking on the street, but the more people do it and benefit from it, the less eccentric it will become.
Ken Nosaka, Professor of Exercise and Sports Science, Edith Cowan University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Retrain Your Brain – by Dr. Seth Gillihan
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15-Minute Arabic”, “Sharpen Your Chess Tactics in 24 Hours”, “Change Your Life in 7 Days”, “Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in 7 weeks”—all real books from this reviewer’s shelves.
The thing with books with these sorts of time periods in the titles is that the time period in the title often bears little relation to how long it takes to get through the book. So what’s the case here?
You’ll probably get through it in more like 7 days, but the pacing is more important than the pace. By that we mean:
Dr. Gillihan starts by assuming the reader is at best “in a rut”, and needs to first pick a direction to head in (the first “week”) and then start getting one’s life on track (the second “week”).
He then gives us, one by one, an array of tools and power-ups to do increasingly better. These tools aren’t just CBT, though of course that features prominently. There’s also mindfulness exercises, and holistic / somatic therapy too, for a real “bringing it all together” feel.
And that’s where this book excels—at no point is the reader left adrift with potential stumbling-blocks left unexamined. It’s a “whole course”.
Bottom line: whether it takes you 7 hours or 7 months, “Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in 7 Weeks” is a CBT-and-more course for people who like courses to work through. It’ll get you where you’re going… Wherever you want that to be for you!
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International Women’s Day (and what it can mean for you, really)
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How to not just #EmbraceEquity, but actually grow it, this International Women’s Day!
It’s International Women’s Day, and there’s a lot going on beyond the hashtagging! So, what’s happening, and how could you get involved in more than a “token” way in your workplace, business, or general life?
Well, that depends on your own environment and circumstances, but for example…
A feminist policy for productivity in the food sector?
We tend to think that in this modern world, we all have equal standing when it comes to productivity, food, and health. And yet…
❝If women do 70 per cent of the work in agriculture worldwide, but the land is mainly owned by men, then we don’t have equity yet. If in Germany, only one-tenth of female farmers manage the farm on which they work on, while they also manage the household, then there is no equity yet❞
~ Lea Leimann, Germany
What to do about it, though? It turns out there’s a worldwide organization dedicated to fixing this! It’s called Slow Food.
Their mission is to make food…
- GOOD: quality, flavorsome and healthy food
- CLEAN: production that does not harm the environment
- FAIR: accessible prices for consumers and fair conditions and pay for producers
…and yes, that explicitly includes feminism-attentive food policy:
Read all about it: Slow Food women forge change in the food system
Do you work in the food system?
If so, you can have an impact. Your knee-jerk reaction might be “I don’t”, but there are a LOT of steps from farm-to-table, so, are you sure?
Story time: me, I’m a writer (you’d never have guessed, right?) and wouldn’t immediately think of myself as working “in the food system”.
But! Not long back I (a woman) was contracted by a marketing agent (a woman) to write marketing materials for a small business (owned by a woman) selling pickles and chutneys across the Australian market, based on the recipes she learned from her mother, in India. The result?
I made an impact in the food chain the other side of the planet from me, without leaving my desk.
Furthermore, the way I went about my work empowered—at the very least—myself and the end client (the lady making and selling the pickles and chutneys).
Sometimes we can’t change the world by ourselves… but we don’t have to.
If we all just nudge things in the right direction, we’ll end up with a healthier, better-fed, more productive system for all!
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Hair-Loss Remedies, By Science
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10almonds Gets Hairy
Hair loss is a thing that at some point affects most men and a large minority of women. It can be a source of considerable dysphoria for both, as it’s often seen as a loss of virility/femininity respectively, and is societally stigmatized in various ways.
Today we’re going to focus on the most common kind: androgenic alopecia, which is called “male pattern baldness” in men and “female pattern baldness” in women, despite being the same thing.
We won’t spend a lot of time on the science of why this happens (we’re going to focus on the remedies instead), but suffice it to say that genes and hormones both play a role, with dihydrogen testosterone (DHT) being the primary villain in this case.
We’ve talked before about the science of 5α-reductase inhibitors to block the conversion of regular testosterone* to DHT, its more potent form:
One Man’s Saw Palmetto Is Another Woman’s Serenoa Repens…
*We all make this to a greater or lesser degree, unless we have had our ovaries/testes removed.
Finasteride
Finasteride is a 5α-reductase inhibitor that performs similarly to saw palmetto, but comes in tiny pills instead of needing to take a much higher dose of supplement (5mg of finasteride is comparable in efficacy to a little over 300mg of saw palmetto).
Does it work? Yes!
Any drawbacks? A few:
- It’ll take 3–6 months to start seeing effects. This is because of the hormonal life-cycle of human hairs.
- Common side-effects include ED.
- It is popularly labelled/prescribed as “only for men”
On that latter point: the warnings about this are severe, detailing how women must not take it, must not even touch it if it has been cut up or crushed.
However… That’s because it can carry a big risk to our unborn fetuses. So, if we are confident we definitely don’t have one of those, it’s not actually applicable to us.
That said, finasteride’s results in women aren’t nearly so clear-cut as in men (though also, there has been less research, largely because of the above). Here’s an interesting breakdown in more words than we have room for here:
Finasteride for Women: Everything You Need to Know
Spironolactone
This one’s generally prescribed to women, not men, largely because it’s the drug sometimes popularly known as a “chemical castration” drug, which isn’t typically great marketing for men (although it can be applied topically, which will have less of an effect on the rest of the body). For women, this risk is simply not an issue.
We’ll be brief on this one, but we’ll just drop this, so that you know it’s an option that works:
❝Spironolactone is an effective and safe treatment of androgenic alopecia which can enhance the efficacy when combined with other conventional treatments such as minoxidil.
Topical spironolactone is safer than oral administration and is suitable for both male and female patients, and is expected to become a common drug for those who do not have a good response to minoxidil❞
Minoxidil
This one is available (to men and women) without prescription. It’s applied topically, and works by shortcutting the hair’s hormonal growth cycle, to reduce the resting phase and kick it into a growth phase.
Does it work? Yes!
Any drawbacks? A few:
- Whereas you’ll remember finasteride takes 3–6 months to see any effect, this one will have an effect very quickly
- Specifically, the immediate effect is: your rate of hair loss will appear to dramatically speed up
- This happens because when hairs are kicked into their growth phase if they were in a resting phase, the first part of that growth phase is to shed each old hair to make room for the new one
- You’ll then need the same 3–6 months as with finasteride, to see the regrowth effects
- If you stop using it, you will immediately shed whatever hair you gained by this method
Why do people choose this over finasteride? For one of three reasons, mainly:
- They are women, and not offered finasteride
- They are men, and do not want the side effects of finasteride
- They just saw an ad and tried it
As to how it works:
Some final notes:
There are some other contraindications and warnings with each of these drugs by the way, so do speak with your doctor/pharmacist. For example:
- Finasteride can tax the liver a little
- Spironolactone can reduce bone turnover
- Minoxidil is a hypotensive; this shouldn’t be an issue for most people, but for some people it could be a problem
There are other hair loss remedies and practices, but the above three are the heavy-hitters, so that’s what we spent our time/space on today. We’ll perhaps cover the less powerful (but less risky) options one of these days.
Meanwhile, take care!
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The Recipe For Empowered Leadership – by Doug Meyer-Cuno
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This is not a “here’s how to become a leader, you young would-be Machiavelli”; it’s more a “so you’re in a leadership role; now what?” book. The book’s subtitle describes well its contents: “25 Ingredients For Creating Value & Empowering Others”
The book is written with the voice of experience, but without the ego-driven padding that accompanies many such books. Especially: any anecdotal illustrations are short and to-the-point, no chapter-long diversions here.
Which we love!
Equally helpful is where the author does spend a little more time and energy: on the “down to brass tacks” of how exactly to do various things.
In short: if instead of a lofty-minded book of vague idealized notions selling a pipedream, you’d rather have a manual of how to actually be a good leader when it comes down to it, this is the book for you.
Pick Up The Recipe For Empowered Leadership On Amazon Today!
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Dates vs Banana – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing dates to banana, we picked the dates.
Why?
It was close, and bananas do have some strengths too! We pitted these two against each other as they’re both sweet fruits often used as a sweetening and consistency-altering ingredient in desserts and sweet snacks, so if you’re making a choice between them, here are the things to consider:
In terms of macros, dates have more than 3x the fiber, more than 2x the protein, and a little over 3x the carbs. You may be wondering how this adds up in terms of glycemic index: dates have the lower GI. So, we pick dates, here, for that reason and overall nutritional density too.
When it comes to vitamins, bananas have their moment, albeit barely: dates have more of vitamins B1, B3, B5, and K, while bananas have more of vitamins A, B6, C, E, and choline, making for a marginal victory for bananas in this category.
Looking at minerals next, however, it’s quite a different story: dates have more calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, and zinc, while bananas are not higher in any mineral. No, not even potassium, for which they are famous—dates have nearly 2x more potassium than bananas.
Adding up these sections makes for a clear win for dates in general!
Enjoy either/both, but dates are the more nutritious snack/ingredient.
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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