Pine Nuts vs Peanuts – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing pine nuts to peanuts, we picked the pine nuts.
Why?
An argument could be made for either, honestly, as it depends on what we prioritize the most. These are both very high-calorie foods, and/but are far from empty calories, as they both contain main nutrients. Obviously, if you are allergic to nuts, this one is just not a comparison for you, sorry.
Looking at the macros first, peanuts are higher in protein, carbs, and fiber, while pine nuts are higher in fats—though the fats are healthy, being mostly polyunsaturated, with about a third of the total fats monounsaturated, and a low amount of saturated fat (peanuts have nearly 2x the saturated fat). On balance, we’ll call the macros category a moderate win for peanuts, though.
In terms of vitamins, peanuts have more of vitamins B1, B3, B5, B6, and B9, while pine nuts have more of vitamins A, B2, C, E, K, and choline. All in all, a marginal win for pine nuts.
In the category of minerals, peanuts have more calcium and selenium, while pine nuts have more copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, and zinc. An easy win for pine nuts, even before we take into account that peanuts have nearly 10x as much sodium. And yes, we are talking about the raw nuts, not nuts that have been roasted and salted.
Adding up the categories gives a win for pine nuts—but if you have certain particular priorities, you might still prefer peanuts for the areas in which peanuts are stronger.
Of course, the best solution is to enjoy both!
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
Why You Should Diversify Your Nuts!
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Watch Out For Lipedema
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Lipedema occurs mostly in women, mostly in times of hormonal change, with increasing risk as time goes by (so for example, puberty yields a lower risk than pregnancy, which yields a lower risk than menopause).
Its name literally means “fat swelling”, and can easily be mistaken for obesity or, in its earlier stages, just pain old cellulite.
Cellulite, by the way, is completely harmless and is also not, per se, an indicator of bad health. But if you have it and don’t like it, you can reduce it:
Obesity is more of a complex matter, and one that we’ve covered here:
Lipedema is actively harmful
Lipedema can become a big problem, because lifestyle change does not reduce lipedema fat, the fat is painful, can lead to obesity if one was not already obese, causes gait and joint abnormalities, causes fatigue, can lead to lymphedema (beyond the scope of today’s article—perhaps another time!) and very much psychosocial distress.
Like many conditions that mostly affect women, the science is… Well, here’s a recent example review that was conducted and published:
Fun fact: in Romanian there is an expression “one eye is laughing; the other is crying”, and it seems appropriate here.
Spot the signs
Because it’s most readily mistaken for cellulite in first presentation, let’s look at the differences between them:
- Cellulite is characterized by dimpled, bumpy, or even skin; lipedema is the same but with swelling too.
- Cellulite is a connective tissue condition; lipedema is too (at least in part), but also involves the abnormal accumulation and deposition of fat cells, rather than just pulling some down a bit.
- Cellulite has no additional symptoms; lipedema soon also brings swollen limbs, joint pain, and/or skin that’s “spongy” and easily bruised.
What to do about it
First, get it checked out by a doctor.
If the doctor says it is just cellulite or obesity, ask them what difference(s) they are basing that on, and ask that they confirm in writing having dismissed your concerns (having this will be handy later if it turns out to be lipedema after all).
If it is lipedema, you will want to catch it early; there is no known cure, but advanced symptoms are a lot easier to keep at bay than they are to reverse once they’ve shown up.
Weight maintenance, skin care (including good hydration), and compression therapy have all been shown to help slow the progression.
If it is allowed to progress unhindered, that’s when a lot more fat accumulation and joint pain is likely to occur. Liposuction and surgery are options, but even they are only a temporary solution, and are obviously not fun things to have to go through.
Prevention is, as ever, much better than
curetreatment ← because there is no known cureOne last thing
Lipedema’s main risk factor is genetic. The bad news is, there’s not much that can be done about that for now, but the good news is, you can at least get the heads-up about whether you are at increased risk or not, and be especially vigilant if you’re in the increased risk group. See also:
One Test, Many Warnings: The Real Benefit Of Genetic Testing
Take care!
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To Pee Or Not To Pee
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Is it “strengthening” to hold, or are we doing ourselves harm if we do? Dr. Heba Shaheed explains in this short video:
A flood of reasons not to hold
Humans should urinate 4–6 times daily, but for many people, the demands of modern life often lead to delaying urination, raising questions about its effects on the body.
So first, let’s look at how it all works: the bladder is part of the urinary system, which includes the kidneys, ureters, urethra, and sphincters. Urine is produced by the kidneys and transported via the ureters into the bladder, a hollow organ with a muscular wall. This muscle (called the detrusor) allows the bladder to inflate as it fills with urine (bearing in mind, the main job of any muscle is to be able to stretch and contract).
As the bladder fills, stretch receptors in that muscle signal fullness to the spinal cord. This triggers the micturition reflex, causing the detrusor to contract and the internal urethral sphincter to open involuntarily. Voluntary control over the external urethral sphincter allows a person to delay or release urine as needed.
So, at what point is it best to go forth and pee?
For most people, bladder fullness is first noticeable at around 150-200ml, with discomfort occurring at 400-500ml (that’s about two cups*). Although the bladder can stretch to hold up to a liter, exceeding this capacity can cause it to rupture, a rare but serious condition requiring surgical intervention.
*note, however, that this doesn’t necessarily mean that drinking two cups will result in two cups being in your bladder; that’s not how hydration works. Unless you are already perfectly hydrated, most if not all of the water will be absorbed into the rest of your body where it is needed. Your bladder gets filled when your body has waste products to dispose of that way, and/or is overhydrated (though overhydration is not very common).
Habitually holding urine and/or urinating too quickly (note: not “too soon”, but literally, “too quickly”, we’re talking about the velocity at which it exits the body) can weaken pelvic floor muscles over time. This can lead to bladder pain, urgency, incontinence, and/or a damaged pelvic floor.
In short: while the body’s systems are equipped to handle occasional delays, holding it regularly is not advisable. For the good of your long-term urinary health, it’s best to avoid straining the system and go whenever you feel the urge.
For more on all of this, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
Keeping your kidneys happy: it’s more than just hydration!
Take care!
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The Diet Myth – by Dr. Tim Spector
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Why are we supposed to go low-carb, but get plenty of whole grains? Avoid saturated fat, but olive oil is one of the healthiest fats around? Will cheese kill us or save us? Even amongst the well-informed, there’s a lot of confusion. This book addresses these and many such topics.
A main theme of the book is howa lot of it relates to the state of our gut microbiome, and what is good or bad for that. He also discusses, for example, how microbes predict obesity better than genes, and the good news is: we can change our microbes a lot more easily than we can change our genes!
In the category of criticism, he repeats some decades-old bad science in some areas outside of his field (i.e. unrelated to nutrition), so that’s unfortunate, and/but doesn’t detract from the value of the book if we keep to the main topic.
Bottom line: if you’d like to understand better the physiology and microbiology behind why dieting does work for most people (and how to do it better), then this is a great book for that.
Click here to check out The Diet Myth, and learn the science behind the confusion!
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Paving The Way To Good Health
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This is Dr. Michelle Tollefson. She’s a gynecologist, and a menopause and lifestyle medicine expert. She’s also a breast cancer survivor, and, indeed, thriver.
So, what does she want us to know?
A Multivector Approach To Health
There’s a joke that goes: a man is trapped in a flooding area, and as the floodwaters rise, he gets worried and begins to pray, but he is interrupted when some people come by on a raft and offer him to go with them. He looks at the rickety raft and says “No, you go on, God will spare me”. He returns to his prayer, and is further interrupted by a boat and finally a helicopter, and each time he gives the same response. He drowns, and in the afterlife he asks God “why didn’t you spare me from the flood?”, and God replies “I sent a raft, a boat, and a helicopter; what more did you want?!”
People can be a bit the same when it comes to different approaches to cancer and other serious illness. They are offered chemotherapy and say “No, thank you, eating fruit will spare me”.
Now, this is not to trivialize those who decline aggressive cancer treatments for other reasons such as “I am old and would rather not go through that; I’d rather have a shorter life without chemo than a longer life with it”—for many people that’s a valid choice.
But it is to say: lifestyle medicine is, mostly, complementary medicine.
It can be very powerful! It can make the difference between life and death! Especially when it comes to things like cancer, diabetes, heart disease, etc.
But it’s not a reason to decline powerful medical treatments if/when those are appropriate. For example, in Dr. Tollefson’s case…
Synergistic health
Dr. Tollefson, herself a lifestyle medicine practitioner and gynecologist (and having thus done thousands of clinical breast exams for other people, screening for breast cancer), says she owes her breast cancer survival to two things, or rather two categories of things:
- a whole-food, plant predominant diet, daily physical activity, prioritizing sleep, minimizing stress, and a strong social network
- a bilateral mastectomy, 16 rounds of chemotherapy, removal of her ovaries, and several reconstructive surgeries
Now, one may wonder: if the first thing is so good, why need the second?
Or on the flipside: if the second thing was necessary, what was the point of the first?
And the answer she gives is: the first thing was the reason she was able to make it through the second thing.
And on the next level: the second thing was the reason she’s still around to talk about the first thing.
In other words: she couldn’t have done it with just one or the other.
A lot of medicine in general, and lifestyle medicine in particular, is like this. If we note that such-and-such a thing decreases our risk of cancer mortality by 4%, that’s a small decrease, but it can add up (and compound!) if it’s surrounded by other things that also each decrease the risk by 12%, 8%, 15%, and so on.
Nor is this only confined to cancer, nor only to the positives.
Let’s take cardiovascular disease: if a person smokes, drinks, eats red meat, stresses, and has a wild sleep schedule, you can imagine those risk factors add up and compound.
If this person and another with a heart-healthy lifestyle both have a stroke (it can happen to anyone, even if it’s less likely in this case), and both need treatment, then two things are true:
- They are both still going to need treatment (medicines, and possibly a thrombectomy)
- The second person is most likely to recover, and most likely to recover more quickly and easily
The second person can be said to have paved the way to their recovery, with their lifestyle.
Which is really important, because a lot of people think “what’s the point in living so healthily if [disease] strikes anyway?” and the answer is:
A very large portion of your recovery is predicated on how you lived your life before The Bad Thing™ happened, and that can be the difference between bouncing back quickly and a long struggle back to health.
Or the difference between a long struggle back to health, or a short struggle followed by rapid decline and death.
In short:
Play the odds, improve your chances with lifestyle medicine. Enjoy those cancer-fighting fruits:
Top 8 Fruits That Prevent & Kill Cancer
…but also, get your various bits checked when appropriate; we know, mammograms and prostate checks etc are not usually the highlight of most people’s days, but they save lives. And if it turns out you need serious medical interventions, consider them seriously.
And, by all means, enjoy mood-boosting nutraceuticals such as:
12 Foods That Fight Depression & Anxiety
…but also recognize that sometimes, your brain might have an ongoing biochemical problem that a tablespoon of pumpkin seeds isn’t going to fix.
And absolutely, you can make lifestyle adjustments to reduce the risks associated with menopause, for example:
Menopause, & How Lifestyle Continues To Matter “Postmenopause”
…but also be aware that if the problem is “not enough estrogen”, sometimes to solution is “take estrogen”.
And so on.
Want to know Dr. Tollefson’s lifestyle recommendations?
Most of them will not be a surprise to you, and we mentioned some of them above (a whole-food, plant predominant diet, daily physical activity, prioritizing sleep, minimizing stress, and a strong social network), but for more specific recommendations, including numbers etc, enjoy:
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Why Going Gluten-Free Could Be A Bad Idea
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Is A Gluten-Free Diet Right For You?
This is Rachel Begun, MS, RD. She’s a nutritionist who, since her own diagnosis with Celiac disease, has shifted her career into a position of educating the public (and correcting misconceptions) about gluten sensitivity, wheat allergy, and Celiac disease. In short, the whole “gluten-free” field.
First, a quick recap
We’ve written on this topic ourselves before; here’s what we had to say:
On “Everyone should go gluten-free”
Some people who have gone gluten-free are very evangelical about the lifestyle change, and will advise everyone that it will make them lose weight, have clearer skin, more energy, and sing well, too. Ok, maybe not the last one, but you get the idea—a dietary change gets seen as a cure-all.
And for some people, it can indeed make a huge difference!
Begun urges us to have a dose of level-headedness in our approach, though.
Specifically, she advises:
- Don’t ignore symptoms, and/but…
- Don’t self-diagnose
- Don’t just quit gluten
One problem with self-diagnosis is that we can easily be wrong:
But why is that a problem? Surely there’s not a health risk in skipping the gluten just to be on the safe side? As it turns out, there actually is:
If we self-diagnose incorrectly, Begun points out, we can miss the actual cause of the symptoms, and by cheerfully proclaiming “I’m allergic to gluten” or such, a case of endometriosis, or Hashimoto’s, or something else entirely, might go undiagnosed and thus untreated.
“Oh, I feel terrible today, there must have been some cross-contamination in my food” when in fact, it’s an undiagnosed lupus flare-up, that kind of thing.
Similarly, just quitting gluten “to be on the safe side” can mask a different problem, if wheat consumption (for example) contributed to, but did not cause, some ailment.
In other words: it could reduce your undesired symptoms, but in so doing, leave a more serious problem unknown.
Instead…
If you suspect you might have a gluten sensitivity, a wheat allergy, or even Celiac disease, get yourself tested, and take professional advice on proceeding from there.
How? Your physician should be able to order the tests for you.
You can also check out resources available here:
Celiac Disease Foundation | How do I get tested?
Or for at-home gluten intolerance tests, here are some options weighed against each other:
MNT | 5 gluten intolerance tests and considerations
Want to learn more?
Begun has a blog:
Rachel Begun | More than just recipes
(it is, in fact, just recipes—but they are very simple ones!)
You also might enjoy this interview, in which she talks about gluten sensitivity, celiac disease, and bio-individuality:
Want to watch it, but not right now? Bookmark it for later
Take care!
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Alzheimer’s Sex Differences May Not Be What They Appear
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Alzheimer’s Sex Differences May Not Be What They Appear
Women get Alzheimer’s at nearly twice the rate than men do, and deteriorate more rapidly after onset, too.
So… Why?
There are many potential things to look at, but four stand out for quick analysis:
- Chromosomes: women usually have XX chromosomes, to men’s usual XY. There are outliers to both groups, people with non-standard combinations of chromosomes, but not commonly enough to throw out the stats.
- Hormones: women usually have high estrogen and low testosterone, compared to men. Again there are outliers and this is a huge oversimplification that doesn’t even look at other sex hormones, but broadly speaking (which sounds vague, but is actually what is represented in epidemiological studies), it will be so.
- Anatomy: humans have some obvious sexual dimorphism (again, there are outliers, but again, not enough to throw out the stats); this seems least likely to be relevant (Alzheimer’s is probably not stored in the breasts, for examples), though average body composition (per muscle:fat ratio) could admittedly be a factor.
- Social/lifestyle: once again, #NotAllWomen etc, but broadly speaking, women and men often tend towards different social roles in some ways, and as we know, of course lifestyle can play a part in disease pathogenesis.
As a quick aside before we continue, if you’re curious about those outliers, then a wiki-walk into the fascinating world of intersex conditions, for example, could start here. But by and large, this won’t affect most people.
So… Which parts matter?
Back in 2018, Dr. Maria Teresa Ferretti et al. kicked up some rocks in this regard, looking not just at genes (as much research has focussed on) or amyloid-β (again, well-studied) but also at phenotypes and metabolic and social factors—bearing in mind that all three of those are heavily influenced by hormones. Noting, for example, that (we’ll quote directly here):
- Men and women with Alzheimer disease (AD) exhibit different cognitive and psychiatric symptoms, and women show faster cognitive decline after diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) or AD dementia.
- Brain atrophy rates and patterns differ along the AD continuum between the sexes; in MCI, brain atrophy is faster in women than in men.
- The prevalence and effects of cerebrovascular, metabolic and socio-economic risk factors for AD are different between men and women.
See: Sex differences in Alzheimer disease—the gateway to precision medicine
So, have scientists controlled for each of those factors?
Mostly not! But they have found clues, anyway, while noting the limitations of the previous way of conducting studies. For example:
❝Women are more likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease and experience faster cognitive decline compared to their male counterparts. These sex differences should be accounted for when designing medications and conducting clinical trials❞
~ Dr. Feixiong Cheng
Read: Research finds sex differences in immune response and metabolism drive Alzheimer’s disease
Did you spot the clue?
It was “differences in immune response and metabolism”. These things are both influenced by (not outright regulated by, but strongly influenced by) sex hormones.
❝As [hormonal] sex influences both the immune system and metabolic process, our study aimed to identify how all of these individual factors influence one another to contribute to Alzheimer’s disease❞
~ Dr. Justin Lathia
Ignoring for a moment progesterone’s role in metabolism, estrogen is an immunostimulant and testosterone is an immunosuppressant. These thus both also have an effect in inflammation, which yes, includes neuroinflammation.
But wait a minute, shouldn’t that mean that women are more protected, not less?
It should! Except… Alzheimer’s is an age-related disease, and in the age-bracket that generally gets Alzheimer’s (again, there are outliers), menopause has been done and dusted for quite a while.
Which means, and this is critical: post-menopausal women not on HRT are essentially left without the immune boost usually directed by estrogen, while men of the same age will be ticking over with their physiology that (unlike that of the aforementioned women) was already adapted to function with negligible estrogen.
Specifically:
❝The metabolic consequences of estrogen decline during menopause accelerate neuropathology in women❞
~ Dr. Rasha Saleh
Critical idea to take away from all this:
Alzheimer’s research is going to be misleading if it doesn’t take into account sex differences, and not just that, but also specifically age-relevant sex differences—because that can flip the narrative. If we don’t take age into account, we could be left thinking estrogen is to blame, when in fact, it appears to be the opposite.
In the meantime, if you’re a woman of a certain age, you might talk with a doctor about whether HRT could be beneficial for you, if you haven’t already:
❝Women at genetic risk for AD (carrying at least one APOE e4 allele) seem to be particularly benefiting from MHT❞
(MHT = Menopausal Hormone Therapy; also commonly called HRT, which is the umbrella term for Hormone Replacement Therapies in general)
~ Dr. Herman Depypere
Source study: Menopause hormone therapy significantly alters pathophysiological biomarkers of Alzheimer’s disease
Pop-sci press release version: HRT could ward off Alzheimer’s among at-risk women
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