Natto vs Tofu – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing nattō to tofu, we picked the nattō.
Why?
In other words, in the comparison of fermented soy to fermented soy, we picked the fermented soy. But the relevant difference here is that nattō is fermented whole soybeans, while tofu is fermented soy milk of which the coagulated curds are then compressed into a block—meaning that the nattō is the one that has “more food per food”.
Looking at the macros, it’s therefore no surprise that nattō has a lot more fiber to go with its higher carb count; it also has slightly more protein. You may be wondering what tofu has more of, and the answer is: water.
In terms of vitamins, nattō has more of vitamins B2, B4, B6, C, E, K, and choline, while tofu has more of vitamins A, B3, and B9. So, a 7:3 win for nattō, even before considering that that vitamin C content of nattō is 65x more than what tofu has.
When it comes to minerals, nattō has more copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, potassium, and zinc, while tofu has more calcium, phosphorus, and selenium. So, a 6:3 win for nattō, and yes, the margins of difference are comparable (being 2–3x more for most of these minerals).
In short, both of these foods are great, but nattō is better.
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
21% Stronger Bones in a Year at 62? Yes, It’s Possible (No Calcium Supplements Needed!)
Take care!
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How To Avoid UTIs
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Psst… A Word To The Wise
Urinary Tract Infections (UTIs) can strike at any age, but they get a lot more common as we get older:
- About 10% of women over 65 have had one
- About 30% of women over 85 have had one
Source: Urinary tract infection in older adults
Note: those figures are almost certainly very underreported, so the real figures are doubtlessly higher. However, we print them here as they’re still indicative of a disproportionate increase in risk over time.
What about men?
Men do get UTIs too, but at a much lower rate. The difference in average urethra length means that women are typically 30x more likely to get a UTI.
However! If a man does get one, then assuming the average longer urethra, it will likely take much more treatment to fix:
Case study: 26-Year-Old Man With Recurrent Urinary Tract Infections
Risk factors you might want to know about
While you may not be able to do much about your age or the length of your urethra, there are some risk factors that can be more useful to know:
Catheterization
You might logically think that having a catheter would be the equivalent of having a really long urethra, thus keeping you safe, but unfortunately, the opposite is true:
Read more: Review of Catheter-Associated Urinary Tract Infections
Untreated menopause
Low estrogen levels can cause vaginal tissue to dry, making it easier for pathogens to grow.
For more information on menopausal HRT, see:
What You Should Have Been Told About Menopause Beforehand
Sexual activity
Most kinds of sexual activity carry a risk of bringing germs very close to the urethra. Without wishing to be too indelicate: anything that’s going there should be clean, so it’s a case for washing your hands/partner(s)/toys etc.
For the latter, beyond soap and water, you might also consider investing in a UV sanitizer box ← This example has a 9” capacity; if you shop around though, be sure to check the size is sufficient!
Kidney stones and other kidney diseases
Anything that impedes the flow of urine can raise the risk of a UTI.
See also: Keeping Your Kidneys Healthy (Especially After 60)
Diabetes
How much you can control this one will obviously depend on which type of diabetes you have, but diabetes of any type is an immunocompromizing condition. If you can, managing it as well as possible will help many aspects of your health, including this one.
More on that:
How To Prevent And Reverse Type 2 Diabetes
Note: In the case of Type 1 Diabetes, the above advice will (alas) not help you to prevent or reverse it. However, reducing/avoiding insulin resistance is even more important in cases of T1D (because if your exogenous insulin stops working, you die), so the advice is good all the same.
How do I know if I have a UTI?
Routine screening isn’t really a thing, since the symptoms are usually quite self-evident. If it hurts/burns when you pee, the most likely reason is a UTI.
Get it checked out; the test is a (non-invasive) urinalysis test. In other words, you’ll give a urine sample and they’ll test that.
Anything else I can do to avoid it?
Yes! We wrote previously about the benefits of cranberry supplementation, which was found even to rival antibiotics:
❝…recommend cranberry ingestion to decrease the incidence of urinary tract infections, particularly in individuals with recurrent urinary tract infections. This would also reduce the [need for] administration of antibiotics❞
Read more: Health Benefits Of Cranberries
Take care!
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Improve Your Insulin Sensitivity!
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We’ve written before about blood sugar management, for example:
10 Ways To Balance Blood Sugars ← this one really is the most solid foundation possible; if you do nothing else, do these 10 things!
And as for why we care:
Good (Or Bad) Health Starts With Your Blood
…because the same things that cause type 2 diabetes, go on to cause many other woes, with particularly strong comorbidities in the case of Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias, as well as heart disease of various kinds, and a long long laundry list of immune dysfunctions / inflammatory disorders in general.
In short, if you can’t keep your blood sugars even, the rest of your health will fall like so many dominoes.
Getting a baseline
Are you counting steps? Counting calories? Monitoring your sleep? Heart rate zones? These all have their merits:
- Steps: One More Resource Against Osteoporosis!
- Calories: Is Cutting Calories The Key To Healthy Long Life?
- Sleep: A Head-To-Head Of Google and Apple’s Top Apps For Getting Your Head Down
- Heart Rate Zones: Heart Rate Zones, Oxalates, & More
But something far fewer people do unless they have diabetes or are very enthusiastic about personal health, is to track blood sugars:
Here’s how: Track Your Blood Sugars For Better Personalized Health
And for understanding some things to watch out for when using a continuous glucose monitor:
Continuous Glucose Monitors Without Diabetes: Pros & Cons
Writer’s anecdote: I decided to give one a try for a few months, and so far it has been informative, albeit unexciting. It seems that with my diet (mostly whole-foods plant based, though I do have a wholegrain wheat product about twice per week (usually: flatbread once, pasta once) which is… Well, we could argue it’s whole-food plant based, but let’s be honest, it’s a little processed), my blood sugars don’t really have spikes at all; the graph looks more like gently rolling low hills (which is good). However! Even so, by experimenting with it, I can see for myself what differences different foods/interventions make to my blood sugars, which is helpful, and it also improves my motivation for intermittent fasting. It also means that if I think “hmm, my energy levels are feeling low; I need a snack” I can touch my phone to my arm and find out if that is really the reason (so far, it hasn’t been). I expect that as I monitor my blood sugars continuously and look at the data frequently, I’ll start to get a much more intuitive feel for my own blood sugars, in much the same way I can generally intuit my hormone levels correctly after years of taking-and-testing.
So much for blood sugars. Now, what about insulin?
Step Zero
If taking care of blood sugars is step one, then taking care of insulin is step zero.
Often’s it’s viewed the other way around: we try to keep our blood sugars balanced, to reduce the need for our bodies to produce so much insulin that it gets worn out. And that’s good and fine, but…
To quote what we wrote when reviewing “Why We Get Sick” last month:
❝Dr. Bikman makes the case that while indeed hyper- or hypoglycemia bring their problems, mostly these are symptoms rather than causes, and the real culprit is insulin resistance, and this is important for two main reasons:
- Insulin resistance occurs well before the other symptoms set in (which means: it is the thing that truly needs to be nipped in the bud; if your fasting blood sugars are rising, then you missed “nipping it in the bud” likely by a decade or more)
- Insulin resistance causes more problems than “mere” hyperglycemia (the most commonly-known result of insulin resistance) does, so again, it really needs to be considered separately from blood sugar management.
This latter, Dr. Bikman goes into in great detail, linking insulin resistance (even if blood sugar levels are normal) to all manner of diseases (hence the title).
You may be wondering: how can blood sugar levels be normal, if we have insulin resistance?
And the answer is that for as long as it is still able, your pancreas will just faithfully crank out more and more insulin to deal with the blood sugar levels that would otherwise be steadily rising. Since people measure blood sugar levels much more regularly than anyone checks for actual insulin levels, this means that one can be insulin resistant for years without knowing it, until finally the pancreas is no longer able to keep up with the demand—then that’s when people finally notice.❞
You can read the full book review here:
Now, testing for insulin is not so quick, easy, or accessible as testing for glucose, but it can be worthwhile to order such a test—because, as discussed, your insulin levels could be high even while your blood sugars are still normal, and it won’t be until the pancreas finally reaches breaking point that your blood sugars show it.
So, knowing your insulin levels can help you intervene before your pancreas reaches that breaking point.
We can’t advise on local services available for ordering blood tests (because they will vary depending on location), but a simple Google search should suffice to show what’s available in your region.
Once you know your insulin levels (or even if you don’t, but simply take the principled position that improving insulin sensitivity will be good regardless), you can set about managing them.
Insulin sensitivity is important, because the better it is (higher insulin sensitivity), the less insulin the pancreas has to make to tidy up the same amount of glucose into places that are good for it to go—which is good. In contrast, the worse it is (higher insulin resistance), the more insulin the pancreas has to make to do the same blood sugar management. Which is bad.
What to do about it
We imagine you will already be eating in a way that is conducive to avoiding or reversing type 2 diabetes, but for anyone who wants a refresher,
See: How To Prevent And Reverse Type 2 Diabetes
…which yes, as well as meaning eating/avoiding certain foods, does recommend intermittent fasting. For anyone who wants a primer on that,
See: Intermittent Fasting: Methods & Benefits
There are also drugs you may want to consider:
Metformin Without Diabetes, For Weight-Loss & More
And “nutraceuticals” that sound like drugs, for example:
Glutathione’s Benefits: The Usual And The Unique ← the good news is, it’s found in several common foods
You may have heard the hype about “nature’s Ozempic”, and berberine isn’t exactly that (works in mostly different ways), but its benefits do include improving insulin sensitivity:
Berberine For Metabolic Health
Lastly, while eating for blood sugar management is all well and good, do be aware that some things affect insulin levels without increased blood sugar levels. So even if you’re using a CGM, you may go blissfully unaware of an insulin spike, because there was no glucose spike on the graph—and in contrast, there could even be a dip in blood sugar levels, if you consumed something that increased insulin levels without providing glucose at the same time, making you think “I should have some carbs”, which visually on the graph would even out your blood sugars, but invisibly, would worsen the already-extant insulin spike.
Read more about this: Strange Things Happening In The Islets Of Langerhans: When Carbs, Proteins, & Fats Switch Metabolic Roles
Now, since you probably can’t test your insulin at a moment’s notice, the way to watch out for this is “hmm, I ate some protein/fats (delete as applicable) without carbs and my blood sugars dipped; I know what’s going on here”.
Want to know more?
We heartily recommend the “Why We Get Sick” book we linked above, as this focuses on insulin resistance/sensitivity itself!
However, a very good general primer on blood sugar management (and thus, by extension, at least moderately good insulin management), is:
Glucose Revolution: The Life-Changing Power of Balancing Your Blood Sugar – by Jessie Inchauspé
Enjoy!
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3 signs your diet is causing too much muscle loss – and what to do about it
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When trying to lose weight, it’s natural to want to see quick results. So when the number on the scales drops rapidly, it seems like we’re on the right track.
But as with many things related to weight loss, there’s a flip side: rapid weight loss can result in a significant loss of muscle mass, as well as fat.
So how you can tell if you’re losing too much muscle and what can you do to prevent it?
EvMedvedeva/Shutterstock Why does muscle mass matter?
Muscle is an important factor in determining our metabolic rate: how much energy we burn at rest. This is determined by how much muscle and fat we have. Muscle is more metabolically active than fat, meaning it burns more calories.
When we diet to lose weight, we create a calorie deficit, where our bodies don’t get enough energy from the food we eat to meet our energy needs. Our bodies start breaking down our fat and muscle tissue for fuel.
A decrease in calorie-burning muscle mass slows our metabolism. This quickly slows the rate at which we lose weight and impacts our ability to maintain our weight long term.
How to tell you’re losing too much muscle
Unfortunately, measuring changes in muscle mass is not easy.
The most accurate tool is an enhanced form of X-ray called a dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) scan. The scan is primarily used in medicine and research to capture data on weight, body fat, muscle mass and bone density.
But while DEXA is becoming more readily available at weight-loss clinics and gyms, it’s not cheap.
There are also many “smart” scales available for at home use that promise to provide an accurate reading of muscle mass percentage.
Some scales promise to tell us our muscle mass. Lee Charlie/Shutterstock However, the accuracy of these scales is questionable. Researchers found the scales tested massively over- or under-estimated fat and muscle mass.
Fortunately, there are three free but scientifically backed signs you may be losing too much muscle mass when you’re dieting.
1. You’re losing much more weight than expected each week
Losing a lot of weight rapidly is one of the early signs that your diet is too extreme and you’re losing too much muscle.
Rapid weight loss (of more than 1 kilogram per week) results in greater muscle mass loss than slow weight loss.
Slow weight loss better preserves muscle mass and often has the added benefit of greater fat mass loss.
One study compared people in the obese weight category who followed either a very low-calorie diet (500 calories per day) for five weeks or a low-calorie diet (1,250 calories per day) for 12 weeks. While both groups lost similar amounts of weight, participants following the very low-calorie diet (500 calories per day) for five weeks lost significantly more muscle mass.
2. You’re feeling tired and things feel more difficult
It sounds obvious, but feeling tired, sluggish and finding it hard to complete physical activities, such as working out or doing jobs around the house, is another strong signal you’re losing muscle.
Research shows a decrease in muscle mass may negatively impact your body’s physical performance.
3. You’re feeling moody
Mood swings and feeling anxious, stressed or depressed may also be signs you’re losing muscle mass.
Research on muscle loss due to ageing suggests low levels of muscle mass can negatively impact mental health and mood. This seems to stem from the relationship between low muscle mass and proteins called neurotrophins, which help regulate mood and feelings of wellbeing.
So how you can do to maintain muscle during weight loss?
Fortunately, there are also three actions you can take to maintain muscle mass when you’re following a calorie-restricted diet to lose weight.
1. Incorporate strength training into your exercise plan
While a broad exercise program is important to support overall weight loss, strength-building exercises are a surefire way to help prevent the loss of muscle mass. A meta-analysis of studies of older people with obesity found resistance training was able to prevent almost 100% of muscle loss from calorie restriction.
Relying on diet alone to lose weight will reduce muscle along with body fat, slowing your metabolism. So it’s essential to make sure you’ve incorporated sufficient and appropriate exercise into your weight-loss plan to hold onto your muscle mass stores.
Strength-building exercises help you retain muscle. BearFotos/Shutterstock But you don’t need to hit the gym. Exercises using body weight – such as push-ups, pull-ups, planks and air squats – are just as effective as lifting weights and using strength-building equipment.
Encouragingly, moderate-volume resistance training (three sets of ten repetitions for eight exercises) can be as effective as high-volume training (five sets of ten repetitions for eight exercises) for maintaining muscle when you’re following a calorie-restricted diet.
2. Eat more protein
Foods high in protein play an essential role in building and maintaining muscle mass, but research also shows these foods help prevent muscle loss when you’re following a calorie-restricted diet.
But this doesn’t mean just eating foods with protein. Meals need to be balanced and include a source of protein, wholegrain carb and healthy fat to meet our dietary needs. For example, eggs on wholegrain toast with avocado.
3. Slow your weight loss plan down
When we change our diet to lose weight, we take our body out of its comfort zone and trigger its survival response. It then counteracts weight loss, triggering several physiological responses to defend our body weight and “survive” starvation.
Our body’s survival mechanisms want us to regain lost weight to ensure we survive the next period of famine (dieting). Research shows that more than half of the weight lost by participants is regained within two years, and more than 80% of lost weight is regained within five years.
However, a slow and steady, stepped approach to weight loss, prevents our bodies from activating defence mechanisms to defend our weight when we try to lose weight.
Ultimately, losing weight long-term comes down to making gradual changes to your lifestyle to ensure you form habits that last a lifetime.
At the Boden Group, Charles Perkins Centre, we are studying the science of obesity and running clinical trials for weight loss. You can register here to express your interest.
Nick Fuller, Charles Perkins Centre Research Program Leader, University of Sydney
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Cardiac Failure Explained – by Dr. Warrick Bishop
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The cover of this book makes it look like it’ll be a flashy semi-celebrity doctor keen to sell his personalized protocol, along with eleventy-three other books, but actually, what’s inside this one is very different:
We (hopefully) all know the basics of heart health, but this book takes it a lot further. Starting with the basics, then the things that it’s easy to feel like you should know but actually most people don’t, then into much more depth.
The format is much more like a university textbook than most pop-science books, and everything about the way it’s written is geared for maximum learning. The one thing it does keep in common with pop-science books as a genre is heavy use of anecdotes to illustrate points—but he’s just as likely to use tables, diagrams, callout boxes, emboldening of key points, recap sections, and so forth. And for the most part, this book is very information-dense.
Dr. Bishop also doesn’t just stick to what’s average, and talks a lot about aberrations from the norm, what they mean and what they do and yes, what to do about them.
On the one hand, it’s more information dense than the average reader can reasonably expect to need… On the other hand, isn’t it great to finish reading a book feeling like you just did a semester at medical school? No longer will you be baffled by what is going on in your (or perhaps a loved one’s) cardiac health.
Bottom line: if you’d like to know cardiac health inside out, this book is an excellent place to start.
Click here to check out Cardiac Failure Explained, and get to the heart of things!
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The Sweet Truth About Diabetes
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There’s A Lot Of Confusion About Diabetes!
For those readers who are not diabetic, nor have a loved one who is diabetic, nor any other pressing reason to know these things, first a quick 101 rundown of some things to understand the rest of today’s main feature:
- Blood sugar levels: how much sugar is in the blood, measured in mg/dL or mmol/L
- Hyperglycemia or “hyper” for short: too much sugar in the blood
- Hypoglycemia or “hypo” for short: too little sugar in the blood
- Insulin: a hormone that acts as a gatekeeper to allow sugar to pass, or not pass, into various parts of the body
- Type 1 diabetes (sometimes capitalized, and/or abbreviated to “T1D”) is an autoimmune disorder that prevents the pancreas from being able to supply the body with insulin. This means that taking insulin consistently is necessary for life.
- Type 2 diabetes is a matter of insulin resistance. The pancreas produces plenty of insulin, but the body has become desensitized to it, so it doesn’t work properly. Taking extra insulin may sometimes be necessary, but for many people, it can be controlled by means of a careful diet and other lifestyle factors.
With that in mind, on to some very popular myths…
Diabetes is caused by having too much sugar
While sugar is not exactly a health food, it’s not the villain of this story either.
- Type 1 diabetes has a genetic basis, triggered by epigenetic factors unrelated to sugar.
- Type 2 diabetes comes from a cluster of risk factors which, together, can cause a person to go through pre-diabetes and acquire type 2 diabetes.
- Those risk factors include:
- A genetic predisposition
- A large waist circumference
- (this is more relevant than BMI or body fat percentage)
- High blood pressure
- A sedentary lifestyle
- Age (the risk starts rising at 35, rises sharply at 45, and continues upwards with increasing age)
- Those risk factors include:
Read more: Risk Factors for Type 2 Diabetes
Diabetics can’t have sugar
While it’s true that diabetics must be careful about sugar (and carbs in general), it’s not to say that they can’t have them… just: be mindful and intentional about it.
- Type 1 diabetics will need to carb-count in order to take the appropriate insulin bolus. Otherwise, too little insulin will result in hyperglycemia, or too much insulin will result in hypoglycemia.
- Type 2 diabetics will often be able to manage their blood sugar levels with diet alone, and slow-release carbs will make this easier.
In either case, having quick release sugars will increase blood sugar levels (what a surprise), and sometimes (such as when experiencing a hypo), that’s what’s needed.
Also, when it comes to sugar, a word on fruit:
Not all fruits are equal, and some fruits can help maintain stable blood sugar levels! Read all about it:
Fruit Intake to Prevent and Control Hypertension and Diabetes
Artificial sweeteners are must-haves for diabetics
Whereas sugar is a known quantity to the careful diabetic, some artificial sweeteners can impact insulin sensitivity, causing blood sugars to behave in unexpected ways. See for example:
The Impact of Artificial Sweeteners on Body Weight Control and Glucose Homeostasis
If a diabetic person is hyper, they should exercise to bring their blood sugar levels down
Be careful with this!
- In the case of type 2 diabetes, it may (or may not) help, as the extra sugar may be used up.
- Type 1 diabetes, however, has a crucial difference. Because the pancreas isn’t making insulin, a hyper (above a certain level, anyway) means more insulin is needed. Exercising could do more harm than good, as unlike in type 2 diabetes, the body has no way to use that extra sugar, without the insulin to facilitate it. Exercising will just pump the syrupy hyperglycemic blood around the body, potentially causing damage as it goes (all without actually being able to use it).
There are other ways this can be managed that are outside of the scope of this newsletter, but “be careful” is rarely a bad approach.
Read more, from the American Diabetes Association:
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The Science Of Sounds
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We Think You Might Like The Sound Of This…
We’ve written before about the benefits of mindfulness meditation, and how to do it.
We also reviewed a great book on a related topic:
This is Your Brain On Music – by Dr. Daniel Levitin
(yes, that’s the same neuroscientist that we featured as an expert talking about The Five Keys of Aging Healthily)
But what happens when we combine the two?
Mantra meditation & music
Most scientific studies that have been undertaken with regard to meditation tend to focus on mindfulness meditation. It’s easy, effective, and (which makes a difference when it comes to publication bias) is a very safe bet when it comes to funding.
However, today we’re going to look at mantra meditation, which has a lot in common, neurologically speaking, with music. Indeed, when the two were compared separately in a randomized control trial:
❝Daily mantra meditation or classical music listening may be beneficial for cognitive outcomes and quality of life of breast cancer survivors with cancer-related cognitive impairment.
The cognitive benefits appear to be sustained beyond the initial intervention period.❞
One possible reason for some of the similar benefits is the vagus nerve—whether intoning a mantra, or humming along to music, the vibrations can stimulate the vagus nerve, which in turn activates the parasympathetic nervous system, resulting in body-wide relaxation:
The Vagus Nerve (And How You Can Make Use Of It)
How effective is mantra meditation?
According to a large recent narrative review, it depends on your goal:
❝Based on the studies in the four important areas presented, there is no doubt of a strong connection between mantra meditation and human health.
Strong evidence has been found that practicing mantra meditation is effective in relieving stress and in coping with hypertension.
For the other two areas: anxiety and immunity, the evidence is inconclusive or not strong enough to firmly support the claim that the mantra meditation can be used to reduce anxiety or to improve immunity. ❞
Read in full: Scientific Evidence of Health Benefits by Practicing Mantra Meditation: Narrative Review
this is a very interesting read if you do have the time!
How do I practice mantra meditation?
The definition is broad, but the critical criteria are:
- You meditate…
- …using a mantra
Lest that seem flippant: those really are the two key points!
Meditation comes in various forms, and mantra meditation is a form of focussed meditation. While some focussed meditation forms may use a candle or some other focal point, in mantra meditation, the mantra itself provides the focus.
You may be wondering: what should the mantra be?
Classic and well-tested mantras include such simple things as the monosyllabic Sanskrit “Om” or “Ham”. We’re a health science newsletter, so we’ll leave esoteric meanings to other publications as they are beyond our scope, but we will say that these result, most naturally, in the humming sound that we mentioned earlier stimulates the vagus nerve.
But that’s not the only way. Practitioners of religions that have repetitive prayer systems (e.g. anything that uses prayer beads, for example) also provide the basis of focused meditation, using a mantra (in this case, usually a very short oft-repeated prayer phrase).
How long is needed for benefits?
Most studies into mantra meditation have used timed sessions of 15–30 minutes, with 20 minutes being a commonly-used session length, once per day. However…
- Vagus nerve benefits should appear a lot more quickly than that (under 5 minutes) in the case of mantras that cause that vibration we mentioned.
- Repetitive spoken prayers (or similar repeated short phrases, for the irreligious) will generally effect relaxation in whatever period of time it takes for your brain to be fully focused on what you are doing now, instead of what you were thinking about before. If using counting beads, then you probably already know what number works for you.
(again, as a health science publication, we cannot comment on any otherworldly benefits, but the worldly benefits seem reason enough to consider these practices for their potential therapeutic effects)
10almonds tip: for any meditative practice that you want to take approximately a given period of time, we recommend investing in a nice sand timer like this one, as this will not result in a jarring alarm going off!
Like to jazz things up a little?
Enjoy: Meditation That You’ll Actually Enjoy ← Meditation games!
Prefer to keep things to the basics?
Enjoy: No Frills, Evidence-Based Mindfulness ← The simplest scientific approach
Take care!
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