PFAS Exposure & Cancer: The Numbers Are High

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PFAS & Cancer Risk: The Numbers Are High

Dr Maaike Van Gerwen studies the effects of exposure to PFAS on cancer development.
Image Credits Mount Sinai

This is Dr. Maaike van Gerwen. Is that an MD or a PhD, you wonder? It’s both.

She’s also Director of Research in the Department of Otolaryngology at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, Scientific Director of the Program of Personalized Management of Thyroid Disease, and Member of the Institute for Translational Epidemiology and the Transdisciplinary Center on Early Environmental Exposures.

What does she want us to know?

She’d love for us to know about her latest research published literally today, about the risks associated with PFAS, such as the kind widely found in non-stick cookware:

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) exposure and thyroid cancer risk

Dr. van Gerwen and her team tested this several ways, and the very short and simple version of the findings is that per doubling of exposure, there was a 56% increased rate of thyroid cancer diagnosis.

(The rate of exposure was not just guessed based on self-reports; it was measured directly from PFAS levels in the blood of participants)

  • PFAS exposure can come from many sources, not just non-stick cookware, but that’s a “biggie” since it transfers directly into food that we consume.
  • Same goes for widely-available microwaveable plastic food containers.
  • Relatively less dangerous exposures include waterproofed clothing.

To keep it simple and look at the non-stick pans and microwavable plastic containers, doubling exposure might mean using such things every day vs every second day.

Practical take-away: PFAS may be impossible to avoid completely, but even just cutting down on the use of such products is already reducing your cancer risk.

Isn’t it too late, by this point in life? Aren’t they “forever chemicals”?

They’re not truly “forever”, but they do have long half-lives, yes.

See: Can we take the “forever” out of forever chemicals?

The half-lives of PFOS and PFOA in water are 41 years and 92 years, respectively.

In the body, however, because our body is constantly trying to repair itself and eliminate toxins, it’s more like 3–7 years.

That might seem like a long time, and perhaps it is, but the time will pass anyway, so might as well get started now, rather than in 3–7 years time!

Read more: National Academies Report Calls for Testing People With High Exposure to “Forever Chemicals”

What should we use instead?

In place of non-stick cookware, cast iron is fantastic. It’s not everyone’s preference, though, so you might also like to know that ceramic cookware is a fine option that’s functionally non-stick but without needing a non-stick coating. Check for PFAS-free status; they should advertise this.

In place of plastic microwaveable containers, Pyrex (or equivalent) glass dishes (you can get them with lids) are a top-tier option. Ceramic containers (without metallic bits!) are also safely microwaveable.

See also:

Here’s a List of Products with PFAS (& How to Avoid Them)

Take care!

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  • What Flexible Dieting Really Means

    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.

    When Flexibility Is The Dish Of The Day

    This is Alan Aragon. Notwithstanding not being a “Dr. Alan Aragon”, he’s a research scientist with dozens of peer-reviewed nutrition science papers to his name, as well as being a personal trainer and fitness educator. Most importantly, he’s an ardent champion of making people’s pursuit of health and fitness more evidence-based.

    We’ll be sharing some insights from a book of his that we haven’t reviewed yet, but we will link it at the bottom of today’s article in any case.

    What does he want us to know?

    First, get out of the 80s and into the 90s

    In the world of popular dieting, the 80s were all about calorie-counting and low-fat diets. They did not particularly help.

    In the 90s, it was discovered that not only was low-fat not the way to go, but also, regardless of the diet in question, rigid dieting leads to “disinhibition”, that is to say, there comes a point (usually not far into a diet) whereby one breaks the diet, at which point, the floodgates open and the dieter binges unhealthily.

    Aragon would like to bring our attention to a number of studies that found this in various ways over the course of the 90s measuring various different metrics including rigid vs flexible dieting’s impacts on BMI, weight gain, weight loss, lean muscle mass changes, binge-eating, anxiety, depression, and so forth), but we only have so much room here, so here’s a 1999 study that’s pretty much the culmination of those:

    Flexible vs. Rigid Dieting Strategies: Relationship with Adverse Behavioral Outcomes

    So in short: trying to be very puritan about any aspect of dieting will not only not work, it will backfire.

    Next, get out of the 90s into the 00s

    …which is not only fun if you read “00s” out loud as “naughties”, but also actually appropriate in this case, because it is indeed important to be comfortable being a little bit naughty:

    In 2000, Dr. Marika Tiggemann found that dichotomous perceptions of food (e.g. good/bad, clean/dirty, etc) were implicated as a dysfunctional cognitive style, and predicted not only eating disorders and mood disorders, but also adverse physical health outcomes:

    Dieting and Cognitive Style: The Role of Current and Past Dieting Behaviour and Cognitions

    This was rendered clearer, in terms of physical health outcomes, by Dr. Susan Byrne & Dr. Emma Dove, in 2009:

    ❝Weight loss was negatively associated with pre-treatment depression and frequency of treatment attendance, but not with dichotomous thinking. Females who regard their weight as unacceptably high and who think dichotomously may experience high levels of depression irrespective of their actual weight, while depression may be proportionate to the degree of obesity among those who do not think dichotomously❞

    Read more: Effect of dichotomous thinking on the association of depression with BMI and weight change among obese females

    Aragon’s advice based on all this: while yes, some foods are better than others, it’s more useful to see foods as being part of a spectrum, rather than being absolutist or “black and white” about it.

    Next: hit those perfect 10s… Imperfectly

    The next decade expanded on this research, as science is wont to do, and for this one, Aragon shines a spotlight on Dr. Alice Berg’s 2018 study with obese women averaging 69 years of age, in which…

    Flexible Eating Behavior Predicts Greater Weight Loss Following a Diet and Exercise Intervention in Older Women

    In other words (and in fact, to borrow Dr. Berg’s words from that paper),

    ❝encouraging a flexible approach to eating behavior and discouraging rigid adherence to a diet may lead to better intentional weight loss for overweight and obese older women❞

    You may be wondering: what did this add to the studies from the 90s?

    And the key here is: rather than being observational, this was interventional. In other words, rather than simply observing what happened to people who thought one way or another, this study took people who had a rigid, dichotomous approach to food, and gave them a 6-month behavioral intervention (in other words, support encouraging them to be more flexible and open in their approach to food), and found that this indeed improved matters for them.

    Which means, it’s not a matter of fate or predisposition, as it could have been back in the 90s, per “some people are just like that; who’s to say which factor causes which”. Instead, now we know that this is an approach that can be adopted, and it can be expected to work.

    Beyond weight loss

    Now, so far we’ve talked mostly about weight loss, and only touched on other health outcomes. This is because:

    • weight loss a very common goal for many
    • it’s easy to measure so there’s a lot of science for it

    Incidentally, if it’s a goal of yours, here’s what 10almonds had to say about that, along with two follow-up articles for other related goals:

    Spoiler: we agree with Aragon, and recommend a relaxed and flexible approach to all three of these things

    Aragon’s evidence-based approach to nutrition has found that this holds true for other aspects of healthy eating, too. For example…

    To count or not to count?

    It’s hard to do evidence-based anything without counting, and so Aragon talks a lot about this. Indeed, he does a lot of counting in scientific papers of his own, such as:

    How much protein can the body use in a single meal for muscle-building? Implications for daily protein distribution

    and

    The effect of protein timing on muscle strength and hypertrophy: a meta-analysis

    …as well as non-protein-related but diet-related topics such as:

    Does Timing Matter? A Narrative Review of Intermittent Fasting Variants and Their Effects on Bodyweight and Body Composition

    But! For the at-home health enthusiast, Aragon recommends that the answer to the question “to count or not to count?” is “both”:

    • Start off by indeed counting and tracking everything that is important to you (per whatever your current personal health intervention is, so it might be about calories, or grams of protein, or grams of carbs, or a certain fat balance, or something else entirely)
    • Switch to a more relaxed counting approach once you get used to the above. By now you probably know the macros for a lot of your common meals, snacks, etc, and can tally them in your head without worrying about weighing portions and knowing the exact figures.
    • Alternatively, count moderately standardized portions of relevant foods, such as “three servings of beans or legumes per day” or “no more than one portion of refined carbohydrates per day”
    • Eventually, let habit take the wheel. Assuming you have established good dietary habits, this will now do you just fine.

    This latter is the point whereby the advice (that Aragon also champions) of “allow yourself an unhealthy indulgence of 10–20% of your daily food”, as a budget of “discretionary calories”, eventually becomes redundant—because chances are, you’re no longer craving that donut, and at a certain point, eating foods far outside the range of healthiness you usually eat is not even something that you would feel inclined to do if offered.

    But until that kicks in, allow yourself that budget of whatever unhealthy thing you enjoy, and (this next part is important…) do enjoy it.

    Because it is no good whatsoever eating that cream-filled chocolate croissant and then feeling guilty about it; that’s the dichotomous thinking we had back in the 80s. Decide in advance you’re going to eat and enjoy it, then eat and enjoy it, then look back on it with a sense of “that was enjoyable” and move on.

    The flipside of this is that the importance of allowing oneself a “little treat” is that doing so actively helps ensure that the “little treat” remains “little”. Without giving oneself permission, then suddenly, “well, since I broke my diet, I might as well throw the whole thing out the window and try again on Monday”.

    On enjoying food fully, by the way:

    Mindful Eating: How To Get More Nutrition Out Of The Same Food

    Want to know more from Alan Aragon?

    Today we’ve been working heavily from this book of his; we haven’t reviewed it yet, but we do recommend checking it out:

    Flexible Dieting: A Science-Based, Reality-Tested Method for Achieving and Maintaining Your Optimal Physique, Performance & Health – by Alan Aragon

    Enjoy!

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  • Mediterranean Diet… In A Pill?

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    Does It Come In A Pill?

    For any as yet unfamiliar with the Mediterranean diet, you may be wondering what it involves, beyond a general expectation that it’s a diet popularly enjoyed in the Mediterranean. What image comes to mind?

    We’re willing to bet that tomatoes feature (great source of lycopene, by the way, and if you’re not getting lycopene, you’re missing out), but what else?

    • Salads, perhaps? Vegetables, olives? Olive oil, yea or nay?
    • Bread? Pasta? Prosciutto, salami? Cheese?
    • Pizza but only if it’s Romana style, not Chicago?
    • Pan-seared liver, with some fava beans and a nice Chianti?

    In fact, the Mediterranean diet is quite clear on all these questions, so to read about these and more (including a “this yes, that no” list), see:

    What Is The Mediterranean Diet, And What Is It Good For?

    So, how do we get that in a pill?

    A plucky band of researchers, Dr. Chiara de Lucia et al. (quite a lot of “et al.”; nine listed authors on the study), wondered to what extent the benefits of the Mediterranean diet come from the fact that the Mediterranean diet is very rich in polyphenols, and set about testing that, by putting the same polyphenols in capsule form, and running a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover clinical intervention trial.

    Now, polyphenols are not the only reason the Mediterranean diet is great; there are also other considerations, such as:

    • a great macronutrient balance with lots of fiber, healthy fats, moderate carbs, and protein from select sources
    • the absence or at least very low presence of a lot of harmful substances such as refined seed oils, added sugars, refined carbohydrates, and the like (“but pasta” yes pasta; in moderation and wholegrain and served with extra sources of fiber and healthy fats, all of which slow down the absorption of the carbs)

    …but polyphenols are admittedly very important too; we wrote about some common aspects of them here:

    Tasty Polyphenols: Enjoy Bitter Foods For Your Heart & Brain

    As for what Dr. de Lucia et al. put into the capsule, behold…

    The ingredients:

    1. Apple Extract 10.0%
    2. Pomegranate Extract 10.0%
    3. Tomato Powder 2.5%
    4. Beet, Spray Dried 2.5%
    5. Olive Extract 7.5%
    6. Rosemary Extract 7.5%
    7. Green Coffee Bean Extract (CA) 7.5%
    8. Kale, Freeze Dried 2.5%
    9. Onion Extract 10.0%
    10. Ginger Extract 10.0%
    11. Grapefruit Extract 2.5%
    12. Carrot, Air Dried 2.5%
    13. Grape Skin Extract 17.5%
    14. Blueberry Extract 2.5%
    15. Currant, Freeze Dried 2.5%
    16. Elderberry, Freeze Dried 2.5%

    And the relevant phytochemicals they contain:

    • Quercetin
    • Luteolin
    • Catechins
    • Punicalagins
    • Phloretin
    • Ellagic Acid
    • Naringin
    • Apigenin
    • Isorhamnetin
    • Chlorogenic Acids
    • Rosmarinic Acid
    • Anthocyanins
    • Kaempferol
    • Proanthocyanidins
    • Myricetin
    • Betanin

    And what, you may wonder, did they find? Well, first let’s briefly summarise the setup of the study:

    They took volunteers (n=30), average age 67, BMI >25, without serious health complaints, not taking other supplements, not vegetarian or vegan, not consuming >5 cups of coffee per day, and various other stipulations like that, to create a fairly homogenous study group who were expected to respond well to the intervention. In contrast, someone who takes antioxidant supplements, already eats many different color plants per day, and drinks 10 cups of coffee, probably already has a lot of antioxidant activity going on, and someone with a lower BMI will generally have lower resting levels of inflammatory markers, so it’s harder to see a change, proportionally.

    About those inflammatory markers: that’s what they were testing, to see whether the intervention “worked”; essentially, did the levels of inflammatory markers go up or down (up is bad; down is good).

    For more on inflammation, by the way, see:

    How to Prevent (or Reduce) Inflammation

    …which also explains what it actually is, and some important nuances about it.

    Back to the study…

    They gave half the participants the supplement for a week and the other half placebo; had a week’s gap as a “washout”, then repeated it, switching the groups, taking blood samples before and after each stage.

    What they found:

    The group taking the supplement had lower inflammatory markers after a week of taking it, while the group taking the placebo had relatively higher inflammatory markers after a week of taking it; this trend was preserved across both groups (i.e., when they switched roles for the second half).

    The results were very significant (p=0.01 or thereabouts), and yet at the same time, quite modest (i.e. the supplement made a very reliable, very small difference), probably because of the small dose (150mg) and small intervention period (1 week).

    What the researchers concluded from this

    The researchers concluded that this was a success; the study had been primarily to provide proof of principle, not to rock the world. Now they want the experiment to be repeated with larger sample sizes, greater heterogeneity, larger doses, and longer intervention periods.

    This is all very reasonable and good science.

    Read in full: A Randomised, Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled, Cross-Over Clinical Trial to Evaluate the Biological Effects and Safety of a Polyphenol Supplement on Healthy Ageing

    What we conclude from this

    That ingredients list makes for a good shopping list!

    Well, not the extracts they listed, necessarily, but rather those actual fruits, vegetables, etc.

    If nine top scientists (anti-aging specialists, neurobiologists, pharmacologists, and at least one professor of applied statistics) came to the conclusion that to get the absolute most bang-for-buck possible, those are the plants to get the phytochemicals from, then we’re not going to ignore that.

    So, take another list above and ask yourself: how many of those 16 foods do you eat regularly, and could you work the others in?

    Want to make your Mediterranean diet even better?

    While the Mediterranean diet is a top-tier catch-all, it can be tweaked for specific areas of health, for example giving it an extra focus on heart health, or brain health, or being anti-inflammatory, or being especially gut healthy:

    Four Ways To Upgrade The Mediterranean

    Enjoy!

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  • Tight Hamstrings? Here’s A Test To Know If It’s Actually Your Sciatic Nerve

    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.

    Tight hamstrings are often not actually due to hamstring issues, but rather, are often being limited by the sciatic nerve. This video offers a home test to determine if the sciatic nerve is causing mobility problems (and how to improve it, if so):

    The Connection

    Try this test:

    • Sit down with a slumped posture.
    • Extend one leg with the ankle flexed.
    • Note any stretching or pulling sensation behind the knee or in the calf.
    • Bring your head down to your chest

    If this increases the sensation, it likely indicates sciatic nerve involvement.

    If only the hamstrings are tight, head movement won’t change the stretch sensation.

    This is because the nervous system is a continuous structure, so head movement can affect nerve tension throughout the body. While this can cause problems, it can also be integral in the solution. Here are two ways:

    • Flossing method: sit with “poor” slumped posture, extend the knee, keep the ankle flexed, and lift the head to relieve nerve tension. This movement helps the sciatic nerve slide without stretching it.
    • Even easier method: lie on your back, grab behind the knee, and extend the leg while extending the neck. This position avoids compression in the gluteal area, making it suitable for severely compromised nerves. Perform the movement without significant stretching or pain.

    In both cases: move gently to avoid straining the nerve, which can worsen muscle tension. Do 10 repetitions per leg, multiple times a day; after a week, increase to 20 reps.

    A word of caution: speak with your doctor before trying these exercises if you have underlying neurological diseases, cut or infected nerves, or other severe conditions.

    For more on all of this, plus visual demonstrations, enjoy:

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

    Want to learn more?

    You might also like to read:

    Exercises for Sciatica Pain Relief

    Take care!

    Share This Post

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  • The Real Benefit Of Genetic Testing

    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.

    Genetic Testing: Health Benefits & Methods

    Genetic testing is an oft-derided American pastime, but there’s a lot more to it than finding out about your ancestry!

    Note: because there are relatively few companies offering health-related genetic testing services, and we are talking about the benefits of those services, some of this main feature may seem like an advert.

    It’s not; none of those companies are sponsoring us, and if any of them become a sponsor at some point, we’ll make it clear and put it in the clearly-marked sponsor segment.

    As ever, our only goal here is to provide science-backed information, to enable you to make your own, well-informed, decisions.

    Health genomics & genetic testing

    The basic goal of health genomics and genetic testing is to learn:

    • What genetic conditions you have
      • Clearcut genetic conditions, such as Fragile X syndrome, or Huntington’s disease
    • What genetic predispositions you have
      • Such as an increased/decreased risk for various kinds of cancer, diabetes, heart conditions, and so forth
    • What genetic traits you have
      • These may range from “blue eyes” to “superathlete muscle type”
    • More specifically, pharmacogenomic information
      • For example, “fast caffeine metabolizer” or “clopidogrel (Plavix) non-responder” (i.e., that drug simply will not work for you)

    Wait, what’s the difference between health genomics and genetic testing?

    • Health genomics is the science of how our genes affect our health.
    • Genetic testing can be broadly defined as the means of finding out which genes we have.

    A quick snippet…

    More specifically, a lot of these services look at which single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs, pronounced “snips”) we have. While we share almost all of our DNA with each other (and indeed, with most vertebrates), our polymorphisms are the bits that differ, and are the bits that, genetically speaking, make us different.

    So, by looking just at the SNPs, it means we “only” need to look at about 3,000,000 DNA positions, and not our entire genome. For perspective, those 3,000,000 DNA positions make up about 0.1% of our whole genome, so without focusing on SNPs, the task would be 1000x harder.

    For example, the kind of information that this sort of testing may give you, includes (to look at some “popular” SNPs):

    • rs53576 in the oxytocin receptor influences social behavior and personality
    • rs7412 and rs429358 can raise the risk of Alzheimer’s disease by more than 10x
    • rs6152 can influence baldness
    • rs333 resistance to HIV
    • rs1800497 in a dopamine receptor may influence the sense of pleasure
    • rs1805007 determines red hair and sensitivity to anesthetics
    • rs9939609 triggers obesity and type-2 diabetes
    • rs662799 prevents weight gain from high fat diets
    • rs12255372 linked to type-2 diabetes and breast cancer
    • rs1799971 makes alcohol cravings stronger
    • rs17822931 determines earwax, sweating and body odor
    • rs1333049 coronary heart disease
    • rs1051730 and rs3750344 nicotine dependence
    • rs4988235 lactose intolerance

    (You can learn about these and more than 100,000 other SNPs at SNPedia.com)

    I don’t know what SNPs I have, and am disinclined to look them up one by one!

    The first step to knowing, is to get your DNA out of your body and into a genetic testing service. This is usually done by saliva or blood sample. This writer got hers done many years ago by 23andMe and was very happy with that service, but there are plenty of other options.

    Healthline did an independent review of the most popular companies, so you might like to check out:

    Healthline: Best DNA Testing Kits of 2023

    Those companies will give you some basic information, such as “6x higher breast cancer risk” or “3x lower age-related macular degeneration risk” etc.

    However, to really get bang-for-buck, what you want to do next is:

    1. Get your raw genetic data (the companies above should provide it); this will probably look like a big text file full of As, Cs, Gs, and Ts, but it make take another form.
    2. Upload it to Promethease. When this writer got hers done , the cost was $2; that price has now gone up to a whopping $12.
    3. You will then get a report that will cross-reference your data with everything known about SNPs, and give a supremely comprehensive, readable-to-the-human-eye, explanation of what it all means for you—from much more specific health risk prognostics, to more trivial things like whether you can roll your tongue or smell decomposed asparagus metabolites in urine.

    A note on privacy: anything you upload to Promethease will be anonymized, and/but in doing so, you consent to it going into the grand scientific open-source bank of “things we know about the human genome”, and thus contribute to the overall sample size of genetic data.

    In our opinion, it means you’re doing your bit for science, without personal risk. But your opinion may differ, and that’s your decision to make.

    Lastly, on the pros and cons of pharmacogenetic testing specifically:

    Don’t Forget…

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  • Triphala Against Cognitive Decline, Obesity, & More

    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.

    Triphala is not just one thing, it is a combination of three plants being used together as one medicine:

    1. Alma (Emblica officinalis)
    2. Bibhitaki (Terminalia bellirica)
    3. Haritaki (Terminalia chebula)

    …generally prepared in a 1:1:1 ratio.

    This is a traditional preparation from ayurveda, and has enjoyed thousands of years of use in India. In and of itself, ayurveda is classified as a pseudoscience (literally: it doesn’t adhere to scientific method; instead, it merely makes suppositions that seem reasonable and acts on them), but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t still have a lot to offer—because, simply put, a lot of ayurvedic medicines work (and a lot don’t).

    So, ayurveda’s unintended job has often been finding things for modern science to test.

    For more on ayurveda: Ayurveda’s Contributions To Science (Without Being Itself Rooted in Scientific Method)

    So, under the scrutiny of modern science, how does triphala stand up?

    Against cognitive decline

    It has most recently come to attention because one of its ingredients, the T. chebula, has been highlighted as effective against mild cognitive impairment (MCI) by several mechanisms of action, via its…

    ❝171 chemical constituents and 11 active constituents targeting MCI, such as flavonoids, which can alleviate MCI, primarily through its antioxidative, anti-inflammatory, and neuroprotective properties. T. Chebula shows potential as a natural medicine for the treatment and prevention of MCI.

    Read in full: The potential of Terminalia chebula in alleviating mild cognitive impairment: a review

    The review was quite groundbreaking, to the extent that it got a pop-science article written about it:

    New review suggests evaluating Tibetan medicinal herb as potential treatment for mild cognitive impairment

    We’d like to talk about those 11 active constituents in particular, but we don’t have room for all of them, so we’ll mention that one of them is quercetin, which we’ve written about before:

    Fight Inflammation & Protect Your Brain, With Quercetin

    For gut health

    It’s also been found to improve gut health by increasing transit time, that is to say, how slowly things move through your gut. Counterintuitively, this reduces constipation (without being a laxative), by giving your gut more time to absorb everything it needs to, and more time for your gut bacteria to break down the things we can’t otherwise digest:

    A comparative evaluation of intestinal transit time of two dosage forms of Haritaki [Terminalia chebula Retz.]

    For weight management

    Triphala can also aid with weight reduction, particularly in the belly area, by modulating our insulin responses to improve insulin sensitivity:

    Efficacy of [triphala], a combination of three medicinal plants in the treatment of obesity; A randomized controlled trial

    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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  • The Anti-Viral Gut – by Dr. Robynne Chutkan

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    Some people get a virus and feel terrible for a few days; other people get the same virus and die. Then there are some who never even get it at all despite being in close proximity with the other two. So, what’s the difference?

    Dr. Robynne Chutkan outlines the case for the difference not being in the virus, but in the people. And nor is it a matter of mysterious fate, but rather, a matter of the different levels of defenses (or lack thereof) that we each have.

    The key, she explains, is in our microbiome, and the specific steps to make sure that ours is optimized and ready to protect us. The book goes beyond “eat prebiotics and probiotics”, though, and goes through other modifiable factors, based on data from this pandemic and the last one a hundred years ago. We also learn about the many different kinds of bacteria that live in our various body parts (internal and external), because as it turns out, our gut microbiome (however important; hence the title) isn’t the only relevant microbiome when it comes to whether or not a given disease will take hold or be eaten alive on the way in.

    The style is very polished—Dr. Chutkan is an excellent educator who makes her points clearly and comprehensibly without skimping on scientific detail.

    Bottom line: if you’d like your chances of surviving any given virus season to not be left to chance, then this is a must-read book.

    Click here to check out The Anti-Viral Gut, and make your body a fortress!

    Don’t Forget…

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    Learn to Age Gracefully

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