Peony Against Inflammation & More

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Yes, this is about the flower, especially white peony (Paeonia lactiflora), and especially the root thereof (Paeoniae radix alba). Yes, the root gets a different botanical name but we promise it is the same plant. You will also read about its active glycoside paeoniflorin, and less commonly, albiflorin (a neuroprotective glycoside present in the root).

It’s one of those herbs that has made its way out of Traditional Chinese Medicine and into labs around the world.

It can be ingested directly as food, or as a powder/capsule, or made into tea.

Anti-inflammatory

Peony suppresses inflammatory pathways, which thus reduces overall inflammation. In particular, this research review found:

❝Pharmacologically, paeoniflorin exhibits powerful anti-inflammatory and immune regulatory effects in some animal models of autoimmune diseases including Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) and Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE)❞

The reviewers also (albeit working from animal models) suggest it may be beneficial in cases of kidney disease and liver disease, along with other conditions.

Source: The Regulatory Effects of Paeoniflorin and Its Derivative Paeoniflorin-6′-O-Benzene Sulfonate CP-25 on Inflammation and Immune Diseases

Here’s a larger review, which also has studies involving humans (and in vivo studies), that found it to effectively help treat autoimmune conditions including rheumatoid arthritis and psoriasis, amongst others:

❝Modern pharmacological research on TGP is based on the traditional usage of PRA, and its folk medicinal value in the treatment of autoimmune diseases has now been verified. In particular, TGP has been developed into a formulation used clinically for the treatment of autoimmune diseases.

Based on further research on its preparation, quality control, and mechanisms of action, TGP is expected to eventually play a greater role in the treatment of autoimmune diseases. ❞

(TGP = Total Glucosides of Paeony)

Source: Total glucosides of paeony: A review of its phytochemistry, role in autoimmune diseases, and mechanisms of action

Antidepressant / Anxiolytic

It also acts as a natural serotonin reuptake inhibitor (as per many pharmaceutical antidepressants), by reducing the expression of the serotonin transporter protein:

Gut Microbiota-Based Pharmacokinetics and the Antidepressant Mechanism of Paeoniflorin

(remember, most serotonin is produced in the gut)

Here’s how that played out when tested (on rats, though):

Effects of Paeonia lactiflora Extract on Estrogen Receptor β, TPH2, and SERT in Rats with PMS Anxiety

Against PMS and/or menopause symptoms

Peony is widely used in Traditional Chinese Medicine to reduce these symptoms in general. However, we couldn’t find a lot of good science for that, although it is very plausible (as the extract contains phytoestrogens and may upregulate estrogen receptors while dialling down testosterone production). Here’s the best we could find for that, and it’s a side-by-side along with licorice root:

❝Paeoniflorin, glycyrrhetic acid and glycyrrhizin decreased significantly the testosterone production but did not change that of delta 4-androstenedione and estradiol. Testosterone/delta 4-androstenedione production ratio was lowered significantly by paeoniflorin, glycyrrhetic acid and glycyrrhizin❞

Effect of paeoniflorin, glycyrrhizin and glycyrrhetic acid on ovarian androgen production

(note: that it didn’t affect estradiol levels is reasonable; it contains phytoestrogens after all, not estradiol—and in fact, if you are taking estradiol, you might want to skip this one, as its phytoestrogens could compete with your estradiol for receptors)

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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  • Cardiac Failure Explained – by Dr. Warrick Bishop

    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.

    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 Five Pillars Of Longevity

    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.

    The Five Pillars Of Longevity

    This is Dr. Mark Hyman. He’s a medical doctor, and he’s the board president of clinical affairs of the Institute for Functional Medicine. He’s also the founder and medical director of the UltraWellness Center!

    What he’d like you to know about is what he calls the “Five Pillars of Longevity”.

    Now, here at 10almonds, we often talk about certain things that science finds to be good for almost any health condition, and have made a habit of referencing what we call “The Usual Five Things™” (not really a trademark, by the way—just a figure of speech), which are:

    1. Have a good diet
    2. Get good exercise
    3. Get good sleep
    4. Reduce (or eliminate) alcohol consumption
    5. Don’t smoke

    …and when we’re talking about a specific health consideration, we usually provide sources as to why each of them are particularly relevant, and pointers as to the what/how associated with them (ie what diet is good, how to get good sleep, etc).

    Dr. Hyman’s “Five Pillars of Longevity” are based on observations from the world’s “Blue Zones”, the popular name for areas with an unusually high concentration of supercentenarians—Sardinia and Okinawa being famous examples, with a particular village in each being especially exemplary.

    These Five Pillars of Longevity partially overlap with ours for three out of five, and they are:

    1. Good nutrition
    2. Optimized workouts
    3. Reduce stress
    4. Get quality sleep
    5. Find (and live) your purpose

    We won’t argue against those! But what does he have to say, for each of them?

    Good nutrition

    Dr. Hyman advocates for a diet he calls “pegan”, which he considers to combine the paleo and vegan diets. Here at 10almonds, we generally advocate for the Mediterranean Diet because of the mountains of evidence for it, but his approach may be similar in some ways, since it looks to consume a majority plant diet, with some unprocessed meats/fish, limited dairy, and no grains.

    By the science, honestly, we stand by the Mediterranean (which includes whole grains), but if for example your body may have issues of some kind with grains, his approach may be a worthy consideration.

    Optimized workouts

    For Dr. Hyman, this means getting in three kinds of exercise regularly:

    • Aerobic/cardio, to look after your heart health
    • Resistance training (e.g. weights or bodyweight strength-training) to look after your skeletal and muscular health
    • Yoga or similar suppleness training, to look after your joint health

    Can’t argue with that, and it can be all too easy to fall into the trap of thinking “I’m healthy because I do x” while forgetting y and/or z! Thus, a three-pronged approach definitely has its merits.

    Reduce stress

    Acute stress (say, a cold shower) is can confer some health benefits, but chronic stress is ruinous to our health and it ages us. So, reducing this is critical. Dr. Hyman advocates for the practice of mindfulness and meditation, as well as journaling.

    Get quality sleep

    Quality here, not just quantity. As well as the usual “sleep hygiene” advices, he has some more unorthodox methods, such as the use of binaural beats to increase theta-wave activity in the brain (and thus induce more restful sleep), and the practice of turning off Wi-Fi, on the grounds that Wi-Fi signals interfere with our sleep.

    We were curious about these recommendations, so we checked out what the science had to say! Here’s what we found:

    In short: probably not too much to worry about in those regards. On the other hand, worrying less, unlike those two things, is a well-established way improve sleep!

    (Surprised we disagreed with our featured expert on a piece of advice? Please know: you can always rely on us to stand by what the science says; we pride ourselves on being as reliable as possible!)

    Find (and live!) your purpose

    This one’s an ikigai thing, to borrow a word from Japanese, or finding one’s raison d’être, as we say in English using French, because English is like that. It’s about having purpose.

    Dr. Hyman’s advice here is consistent with what many write on the subject, and it’d be an interesting to have more science on, but meanwhile, it definitely seems consistent with commonalities in the Blue Zone longevity hotspots, where people foster community, have a sense of belonging, know what they are doing for others and keep doing it because they want to, and trying to make the world—or even just their little part of it—better for those who will follow.

    Being bitter, resentful, and self-absorbed is not, it seems a path to longevity. But a life of purpose, or even just random acts of kindness, may well be.

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  • Infections, Heart Failure, & More

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    Some health news to round off the week:

    The Infection That Leads To Heart Failure

    It’s long been held that, for example, flossing reduces heart disease risk, with the hypothesis being that if plaque bacteria enter the blood stream, well, that’s an even worse place for plaque bacteria to be. Now, with much more data, attention has turned to

    1. actual infections, and
    2. actual heart failure

    Way to up the ante! And, it holds true regardless of what kind of infection. So, you might think that a UTI, for example, is surely “downstream” and should not affect the heart, but it does. Because of this, researchers currently believe that it is not the infection itself, so much as the body’s inflammation response to infection, that leads to the heart failure. Which is reasonable, because, for example, atherosclerosis is made mostly not of cholesterol itself, but rather mostly of dead immune cells that got stuck in the cholesterol.

    Moreover, it’s not so much about the acute inflammatory response (which is almost always a good thing, circumstantially), but rather that after cases where an infection managed to take hold, the immune system can then often stay on high alert for many years alter. Long COVID is an obvious recent example of this, but it’s hardly a new phenomenon; see for example post-polio syndrome, and consider how many more such post-infection maladies are likely to exist that never got a name because they flew under the radar or got diagnosed as fibromyalgia or something (fibromyalgia is a common diagnosis doctors give when they acknowledge something’s wrong, and it causes pain and exhaustion, but they don’t know what, and it appears to be stable—so while it can be helpful to put a name to the collection of symptoms, it’s a non-diagnosis diagnosis on the doctors’ part. It’s saying “I diagnose you with hurty tiredness”).

    The take-away from all this? Avoid infections, for your heart’s sake, and if you do get an infection, take it seriously even if it’s minor. The safe amount of infection is “no infection”.

    Read in full: Study uncovers new link between infections and heart failure

    Related: What’s the difference between a heart attack and cardiac arrest? One’s about plumbing, the other wiring

    Cold Water Immersion: Hot Or Not?

    The evidence is clear for some benefits; for others, not so much:

    • It’s great (if you’re already in fair health, and definitely not if you have a heart condition) to improve circulation and stress response
    • There may be some benefits to immune function, but however reasonable the hypothesis, actual evidence is thin on the ground
    • The oft-hyped mood benefits are a) marginal b) short-lived, with benefits fading after 3 months of regular cold baths/showers/etc

    Read in full: The big chill: Is cold-water immersion good for our health?

    Related: Ice Baths: To Dip Or Not To Dip?

    The Unspoken Trials Of Going To The Gym (While Being A Woman)

    Public health decision-makers often think that getting people to go to the gym more is a matter of public information, or perhaps branding. Some who have their thinking heads on might even realize that there may be economic factors for many. But for women, there’s an additional factor—or rather, an additionally prominent factor. The study we’ll link started with this observation (please read it in the voice of your favorite nature documentary narrator):

    ❝Despite an increase in gym memberships, women are less active than men and little is known about the barriers women face when navigating gym spaces.❞

    What then, of these shy, elusive creatures that make up a mere 51% of the world’s population?

    A medium-sized (n=279) study of women, of whom 84% being current gym-goers, reported often feeling “judged for their appearance or performance, as well as having to fight for space in the gym and to be taken seriously, while navigating harassment and unsolicited comments from men”

    Even gym attire becomes an issue:

    ❝Aligning with previous literature, women often chose attire based on comfort and functionality. However, their choices were also influenced by comparisons with others or fear of judgement for wearing non-branded attire or looking too put together. Many women also chose gym attire to hide perceived problem areas or avoid appearance concerns, including visible sweat stains.❞

    …which main seem silly; you’re at the gym, of course you’re going to sweat, but if you’re the only one with visible sweat stains, then there can be social consequences (bad ones).

    Similarly, there’s a “damned if you do; damned if you don’t” when it comes to working out while fat—on the one hand, society conflates fatness with laziness; on the other, it can be extra intimidating to be the only fat person in a gym full of people who look like they’re going to audition for a superhero movie.

    ❝In the gym, just like in other areas of life, women often feel stuck between being seen as ‘too much’ and ‘not enough’, dealing with judgement about how they look, how they perform, and even how much space they take up. Even though the pressure to be super thin is decreasing, the growing focus on being muscular and athletic is creating new challenges. It is pushing unrealistic standards that can negatively affect women’s body image and overall well-being.❞

    Writer’s note: I live a few minutes walk from my nearest gym, and I work out at home instead. This way, if I want to do yoga in my pajamas, I can. If I want to use my treadmill naked and watch my T+A bounce in the mirror, I can. If I want to lift weights in the dress I happened to be wearing, I can. Alas that I can’t swim at home!

    Read in full: Women face multiple barriers while exercising in gyms

    Related: Body Image Dissatisfaction/Appreciation Across The Ages

    Take care!

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  • Scarcity Brain – by Michael Easter

    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.

    After a brief overview of theevolutionary psychology underpinnings of the scarcity brain, the author grounds the rest of this book firmly in the present. He explains how the scarcity loop hooks us and why we crave more, and what factors can increase or lessen its hold over us.

    As for what things we are wired to consider “potentially scarce any time now” no matter how saturated we are in them, he looks at an array of categories, each with their nuances. From the obvious such as “food” and “stuff“, to understandable “information” and “happiness“, to abstractions like “influence“, he goes to many sources—experts of various kinds from around the world—to explore how we can know “how much is enough”, and—which can be harder—act accordingly.

    The key, he argues, is not in simply wanting less, but in understanding why we crave more in the first place, get rid of our worst habits, and use what we already have, better.

    Bottom line: if you feel a gnawing sense of needing more “to be on the safe side”, this book can help you to be a little more strategic (and at the same time, less stressed!) about that.

    Click here to check out Scarcity Brain, and manage yours more mindfully!

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  • PTSD, But, Well…. Complex.

    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.

    PTSD is typically associated with military veterans, for example, or sexual assault survivors. There was a clear, indisputable, Bad Thing™ that was experienced, and it left a psychological scar. When something happens to remind us of that—say, there are fireworks, or somebody touches us a certain way—it’ll trigger an immediate strong response of some kind.

    These days the word “triggered” has been popularly misappropriated to mean any adverse emotional reaction, often to something trivial.

    But, not all trauma is so clear. If PTSD refers to the result of that one time you were smashed with a sledgehammer, C-PTSD (Complex PTSD) refers to the result of having been hit with a rolled-up newspaper every few days for fifteen years, say.

    This might have been…

    • childhood emotional neglect
    • a parent with a hair-trigger temper
    • bullying at school
    • extended financial hardship as a young adult
    • “just” being told or shown all too often that your best was never good enough
    • the persistent threat (real or imagined) of doom of some kind
    • the often-reinforced idea that you might lose everything at any moment

    If you’re reading this list and thinking “that’s just life though”, you might be in the estimated 1 in 5 people with (often undiagnosed) C-PTSD.

    How About You? Take The (5mins) Test Here

    Now, we at 10almonds are not doctors or therapists and even if we were, we certainly wouldn’t try to diagnose from afar. But, even if there’s only a partial match, sometimes the same advice can help.

    So what are the symptoms of C-PTSD?

    • A feeling that nothing is safe; we might suddenly lose what we have gained
    • The body keeps the score… And it shows. We may have trouble relaxing, an aversion to exercise for reasons that don’t really add up, or an aversion to being touched.
    • Trouble sleeping, born of nagging sense that to sleep is to be vulnerable to attack, and/or lazy, and/or negligent of our duties
    • Poor self-image, about our body and/or about ourself as a person.
    • We’re often drawn to highly unavailable people—or we are the highly unavailable person to which our complementary C-PTSD sufferers are attracted.
    • We are prone to feelings of rage. Whether we keep a calm lid on it or lose our temper, we know it’s there. We’re angry at the world and at ourselves.
    • We are not quick to trust—we may go through the motions of showing trust, but we’re already half-expecting that trust to have been misplaced.
    • “Hell is other people” has become such a rule of life that we may tend to cloister ourselves away from company.
    • We may try to order our environment around us as a matter of safety, and be easily perturbed by sudden changes being imposed on us, even if ostensibly quite minor or harmless.
    • In a bid to try to find safety, we may throw ourselves into work—whatever that is for us. It could be literally our job, or passion projects, or our family, or community, and in and of itself that’s great! But the motivation is more of an attempt to distract ourselves from The Horrors™.

    “Alright, I scored more of those than I care to admit. What now?”

    A lot of the answer lies in first acknowledging to yourself what happened, to make you feel the way you do now. If you, for example, have an abject hatred of Christmas, what were your childhood Christmases like? If you fear losing money that you’ve accumulated, what underpins that fear? It could be something that directly happened to you, but it also could just be repeated messages you received from your parents, for example.

    It could even be that you had superficially an idyllic perfect childhood. Health, wealth, security, a loving family… and simply a chemical imbalance in your brain made it a special kind of Hell for you that nobody understood, and perhaps you didn’t either.

    Unfortunately, a difficult task now lies ahead: giving love, understanding, compassion, and reassurance to the person for whom you may have the most contempt in the world: yourself.

    If you’d like some help with that, here are some resources:

    ComplexTrauma.org (a lot of very good free resources, with no need for interaction)

    CPTSD Foundation (mostly paid courses and the like)

    Some final words about healing…

    • You are in fact amazing,
    • You can do it, and
    • You deserve it.

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  • How Your Sleep Position Changes Dementia Risk

    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.

    This is not just about sleep duration or even about sleep quality… It really is about which way your body is positioned.

    Goodnight, glymphatic system

    The association between sleeping position and dementia risk is about glymphatic drainage, which is largely powered by gravity (and thus dependent on which way around your head and neck are oriented), and very important for clearing toxins out of the brain—including beta-amyloid proteins.

    This becomes particularly important when the glymphatic system becomes less efficient in midlife, often 15–20 years before cognitive decline symptoms appear.

    The video’s thumbnail headline, “SCIENTISTS REVEAL: THE WAY YOUR SLEEP CAN CAUSE DEMENTIA” is overstated and inaccurate, but our adjusted headline “how your sleep position changes dementia risk” is actually representative of the paper on which this video was based; we’ll quote from the paper itself here:

    ❝This paper concludes that 1. glymphatic clearance plays a major role in Alzheimer’s pathology; 2. the vast majority of waste clearance occurs during sleep; 3. dementias are associated with sleep disruption, alongside an age-related decline in AQP4 polarization; and 4. lifestyle choices such as sleep position, alcohol intake, exercise, omega-3 consumption, intermittent fasting and chronic stress all modulate* glymphatic clearance. Lifestyle choices could therefore alter Alzheimer’s disease risk through improved glymphatic clearance, and could be used as a preventative lifestyle intervention for both healthy brain ageing and Alzheimer’s disease.❞

    …and specifically, they found:

    ❝Glymphatic transport is most efficient in the right lateral sleeping position, with more CSF clearance occurring compared to supine and prone. The average person changes sleeping position 11 times per night, but there was no difference in the number of position changes between neurodegenerative and control groups, making the percentage of time spent in supine position the risk factor, not the number of position changes❞

    Read the paper in full here: The Sleeping Brain: Harnessing the Power of the Glymphatic System through Lifestyle Choices

    *saying “modulate” here is not as useful as it could be, because they modulate it differently: side-sleeping improves clearance; back sleeping decreases it; front-sleeping isn’t great either. Alcohol intake reduces clearance, exercise (especially cardiovascular exercise) improves it; omega-3 consumption improves it up a degree and does depend on omega-3/6 ratios, intermittent fasting improves it, and chronic stress worsens it.

    And for a more pop-science presentation, enjoy:

    Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!

    Want to learn more?

    You might also like to read:

    How To Clean Your Brain (Glymphatic Health Primer)

    Take care!

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