Pomegranate’s Health Gifts Are Mostly In Its Peel

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Pomegranate Peel’s Potent Potential

Pomegranates have been enjoying a new surge in popularity in some parts, widely touted for their health benefits. What’s not so widely touted is that most of the bioactive compounds that give these benefits are concentrated in the peel, which most people in most places throw away.

They do exist in the fruit too! But if you’re discarding the peel, you’re missing out:

Food Applications and Potential Health Benefits of Pomegranate and its Derivatives

“That peel is difficult and not fun to eat though”

Indeed. Drying the peel, especially freeze-drying it, is a good first step:

❝Freeze drying peels had a positive effect on the total phenolic, tannins and flavonoid than oven drying at all temperature range. Moreover, freeze drying had a positive impact on the +catechin, -epicatechin, hesperidin and rutin concentrations of fruit peel. ❞

Source: Effect of drying on the bioactive compounds, antioxidant, antibacterial and antityrosinase activities of pomegranate peel

Once it is freeze-dried, it is easy to grind it into a powder for use as a nutritional supplement.

“How useful is it?”

Studies with 500mg and 1000mg per day in people with cases of obesity and/or type 2 diabetes saw significant improvements in assorted biomarkers of cardiometabolic health, including blood pressure, blood sugar levels, cholesterol, and hemoglobin A1C:

It also has anticancer properties:

…and neuroprotective benefits:

…and it may protect against osteopenia and osteoporosis, but we only have animal or in vitro studies so far, for example:

Want to try it?

We don’t sell it, but you can buy pomegranates at your local supermarket, or buy the peel extract ready-made from online sources; here’s an example on Amazon for your convenience

(the marketing there is for use of the 100% pomegranate peel powder as a face mask; it also has health benefits for the skin when applied topically, but we didn’t have time to cover that today)

Enjoy!

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    Dr. Walters’s ‘Rehab Science’ delves into pain’s nature, overcoming it, different injury treatments, and includes a practical guide to rehabilitation with vivid illustrations. A must-read for healing.

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  • Qigong: A Breath Of Fresh Air?

    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.

    Qigong: Breathing Is Good (Magic Remains Unverified)

    In Tuesday’s newsletter, we asked you for your opinions of qigong, and got the above-depicted, below-described, set of responses:

    • About 55% said “Qigong is just breathing, but breathing exercises are good for the health”
    • About 41% said “Qigong helps regulate our qi and thus imbue us with healthy vitality”
    • One (1) person said “Qigong is a mystical waste of time and any benefits are just placebo”

    The sample size was a little low for this one, but the results were quite clearly favorable, one way or another.

    So what does the science say?

    Qigong is just breathing: True or False?

    True or False, depending on how we want to define it—because qigong ranges in its presentation from indeed “just breathing exercises”, to “breathing exercises with visualization” to “special breathing exercises with visualization that have to be exactly this way, with these hand and sometimes body movements also, which also must be just right”, to far more complex definitions that involve qi by various mystical definitions, and/or an appeal to a scientific analog of qi; often some kind of bioelectrical field or such.

    There is, it must be said, no good quality evidence for the existence of qi.

    Writer’s note, lest 41% of you want my head now: I’ve been practicing qigong and related arts for about 30 years and find such to be of great merit. This personal experience and understanding does not, however, change the state of affairs when it comes to the availability (or rather, the lack) of high quality clinical evidence to point to.

    Which is not to say there is no clinical evidence, for example:

    Acute Physiological and Psychological Effects of Qigong Exercise in Older Practitioners

    …found that qigong indeed increased meridian electrical conductance!

    Except… Electrical conductance is measured with galvanic skin responses, which increase with sweat. But don’t worry, to control for that, they asked participants to dry themselves with a towel. Unfortunately, this overlooks the fact that a) more sweat can come where that came from, because the body will continue until it is satisfied of adequate homeostasis, and b) drying oneself with a towel will remove the moisture better than it’ll remove the salts from the skin—bearing in mind that it’s mostly the salts, rather than the moisture itself, that improve the conductivity (pure distilled water does conduct electricity, but not very well).

    In other words, this was shoddy methodology. How did it pass peer review? Well, here’s an insight into that journal’s peer review process…

    ❝The peer-review system of EBCAM is farcical: potential authors who send their submissions to EBCAM are invited to suggest their preferred reviewers who subsequently are almost invariably appointed to do the job. It goes without saying that such a system is prone to all sorts of serious failures; in fact, this is not peer-review at all, in my opinion, it is an unethical sham.❞

    ~ Dr. Edzard Ernst, a founding editor of EBCAM (he since left, and decries what has happened to it since)

    One of the other key problems is: how does one test qigong against placebo?

    Scientists have looked into this question, and their answers have thus far been unsatisfying, and generally to the tune of the true-but-unhelpful statement that “future research needs to be better”:

    Problems of scientific methodology related to placebo control in Qigong studies: A systematic review

    Most studies into qigong are interventional studies, that is to say, they measure people’s metrics (for example, blood pressure, heart rate, maybe immune function biomarkers, sleep quality metrics of various kinds, subjective reports of stress levels, physical biomarkers of stress levels, things like that), then do a course of qigong (perhaps 6 weeks, for example), then measure them again, and see if the course of qigong improved things.

    This almost always results in an improvement when looking at the before-and-after, but it says nothing for whether the benefits were purely placebo.

    We did find one study that claimed to be placebo-controlled:

    A placebo-controlled trial of ‘one-minute qigong exercise’ on the reduction of blood pressure among patients with essential hypertension

    …but upon reading the paper itself carefully, it turned out that while the experimental group did qigong, the control group did a reading exercise. Which is… Saying how well qigong performs vs reading (qigong did outperform reading, for the record), but nothing for how well it performs vs placebo, because reading isn’t a remotely credible placebo.

    See also: Placebo Effect: Making Things Work Since… Well, A Very Long Time Ago ← this one explains a lot about how placebo effect does work

    Qigong is a mystical waste of time: True or False?

    False! This one we can answer easily. Interventional studies invariably find it does help, and the fact remains that even if placebo is its primary mechanism of action, it is of benefit and therefore not a waste of time.

    Which is not to say that placebo is its only, or even necessarily primary, mechanism of action.

    Even from a purely empirical evidence-based medicine point of view, qigong is at the very least breathing exercises plus (usually) some low-impact body movement. Those are already two things that can be looked at, mechanistic processes pointed to, and declarations confidently made of “this is an activity that’s beneficial for health”.

    See for example:

    …and those are all from respectable journals with meaningful peer review processes.

    None of them are placebo-controlled, because there is no real option of “and group B will only be tricked into believing they are doing deep breathing exercises with low-impact movements”; that’s impossible.

    But! They each show how doing qigong reliably outperforms not doing qigong for various measurable metrics of health.

    And, we chose examples with physical symptoms and where possible empirically measurable outcomes (such as COVID-19 infection levels, or inflammatory responses); there are reams of studies showings qigong improves purely subjective wellbeing—but the latter could probably be claimed for any enjoyable activity, whereas changes in inflammatory biomarkers, not such much.

    In short: for most people, it indeed reliably helps with many things. And importantly, it has no particular risks associated with it, and it’s almost universally framed as a complementary therapy rather than an alternative therapy.

    This is critical, because it means that whereas someone may hold off on taking evidence-based medicines while trying out (for example) homeopathy, few people are likely to hold off on other treatments while trying out qigong—since it’s being viewed as a helper rather than a Hail-Mary.

    Want to read more about qigong?

    Here’s the NIH’s National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health has to say. It cites a lot of poor quality science, but it does mention when the science it’s citing is of poor quality, and over all gives quite a rounded view:

    Qigong: What You Need To Know

    Enjoy!

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  • Ashwagandha: The Root of All Even-Mindedness?

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    Ashwagandha: The Root Of All Even-Mindedness?

    In the past few years, Ashwagandha root has been enjoying popular use in consumer products ranging from specialist nootropic supplement stacks, to supermarket teas and hot chocolates.

    This herb is considered to have a calming effect, but the science goes a lot deeper than that. Let’s take a look!

    Last summer, a systematic review was conducted, that asked the question:

    Does Ashwagandha supplementation have a beneficial effect on the management of anxiety and stress?

    While they broadly found the answer was “yes”, they expressed low confidence, and even went so far as to say there was contradictory evidence. We (10almonds) were not able to find any contradictory evidence, and their own full article had been made inaccessible to the public, so we couldn’t double-check theirs.

    We promptly did our own research review, and we found many studies this year supporting Ashwaghanda’s use for the management of anxiety and stress, amongst other benefits.

    First, know: Ashwagandha’s scientific name is “Withania somnifera”, so if you see that (or a derivative of it) mentioned in a paper or extract, it’s the same thing.

    Onto the benefits…

    A study from the same summer investigated “the efficacy of Withania somnifera supplementation on adults’ cognition and mood”, and declared that:

    “in conclusion, Ashwagandha supplementation may improve the physiological, cognitive, and psychological effects of stress.”

    We notice the legalistic “may improve”, but the data itself seems more compelling than that, because the study showed that it in fact “did improve” those things. Specifically, Ashwagandha out-performed placebo in most things they measured, and most (statistically) significantly, reduced cortisol output measurably. Cortisol, for any unfamiliar, is “the stress hormone”.

    Another study that looked into its anti-stress properties is this one:

    Ashwagandha Modulates Stress, Sleep Dynamics, and Mental Clarity

    This study showed that Ashwagandha significantly outperformed placebo in many ways, including:

    • sleep quality
    • cognitive function
    • energy, and
    • perceptions of stress management.

    Ashwagandha is popular among students, because it alleviates stress while also promising benefits to memory, attention, and thinking. So, this study on students caught our eye:

    The Perceived Impact of Ashwagandha on Stress, Sleep Quality, Energy, and Mental Clarity for College Students: Qualitative Analysis of a Double-Blind Randomized Control Trial

    Their findings demonstrated that Ashwagandha increased college students’ perceived well-being through supporting sustained energy, heightened mental clarity, and enhanced sleep quality.

    That was about perceived well-being and based on self-reports, though

    So: what about hard science?

    A later study (in September) found supplementation with 400 mg of Ashwagandha improved executive function, helped sustain attention, and increased short-term/working memory.

    Read the study: Effects of Acute Ashwagandha Ingestion on Cognitive Function

    ❝But aside from the benefits regarding stress, anxiety, sleep quality, cognitive function, energy levels, attention, executive function, and memory, what has Ashwagandha ever done for us?

    Well, there have been studies investigating its worth against depression, like this one:

    Can Traditional Treatment Such as Ashwagandha Be Beneficial in Treating Depression?

    Their broad answer: Ashwagandha works against depression, but they don’t know how it works.

    They did add: “Studies also show that ashwagandha may bolster the immune system, increase stamina, fight inflammation and infection, combat tumors*, reduce stress, revive the libido, protect the liver and soothe jangled nerves.

    That’s quite a lot, including a lot of physical benefits we’ve not explored in this research review which was more about Ashwagandha’s use as a nootropic!

    We’ve been focusing on the more mainstream, well-studied benefits, but for any interested in Ashwagandha’s anti-cancer potential, here’s an example:

    Evaluating anticancer properties of [Ashwagandha Extract]-a potent phytochemical

    In summary:

    There is a huge weight of evidence (of which we’ve barely skimmed the surface here in this newsletter, but there’s only so much we can include, so we try to whittle it down to the highest quality most recent most relevant research) to indicate that Ashwagandha is effective…

    • Against stress
    • Against anxiety
    • Against depression
    • For sleep quality
    • For memory (working, short-term, and long-term)
    • For mental clarity
    • For attention
    • For stamina
    • For energy levels
    • For libido
    • For immune response
    • Against inflammation
    • Against cancer
    • And more*

    *(seriously, this is not hyperbole… We didn’t even look at its liver-protective functions, for instance)

    Bottom line:

    You’d probably like some Ashwagandha now, right? We know we would.

    We don’t sell it (or anything else, for that matter), but happily the Internet does:

    Try Out Ashwagandha For Yourself Here!

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  • Treat Your Own Hip – by Robin McKenzie

    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.

    We previously reviewed another book by this author in this series, “Treat Your Own Knee”, and today it’s the same deal, but for the hip.

    A quick note about the author first: a physiotherapist and not a doctor, but with over 40 years of practice to his name and 33 letters after his name (CNZM OBE FCSP (Hon) FNZSP (Hon) Dip MDT Dip MT), he seems to know his stuff.

    He takes the reader through first diagnosing the nature of the pain (and how to rule out, for example, a back problem manifesting as hip pain, rather than a hip problem per se—and points to his own “Treat Your Own Back” manual if it turns out that that’s your problem instead), and then treating it. A bold claim, the kind that many people’s lawyers don’t let them make, but once again, this guy is pretty much the expert when it comes to this. Ask any other physiotherapist, and they probably have several of his books on their shelf.

    The treatments recommend are tailored to the results of various diagnostic flowcharts; essentially troubleshooting your hip. However, they mainly consist of exercises (perhaps the greatest value of the book), and lifestyle adjustments (these ones, 10almonds readers probably know already, but a reminder never hurts).

    The explanations are thorough while still being comprehensible, and there is zero sensationalization or fluff. It is straight to the point, and clearly illustrated too with diagrams and photographs.

    Bottom line: if you’re looking for a “one-stop shop” for diagnosing and treating your bad hip, then this is it.

    Click here to check out Treat Your Own Hip, and indeed Treat Your Own Hip!

    PS: if you have musculoskeletal problems elsewhere in your body, you might want to check out the rest of his body parts series (neck, back, shoulder, wrist, knee, ankle) for the one that’s tailored to your specific problem.

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  • From eye exams to blood tests and surgery: how doctors use light to diagnose disease

    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 the next article in our ‘Light and health’ series, where we look at how light affects our physical and mental health in sometimes surprising ways. Read other articles in the series.

    You’re not feeling well. You’ve had a pounding headache all week, dizzy spells and have vomited up your past few meals.

    You visit your GP to get some answers and sit while they shine a light in your eyes, order a blood test and request some medical imaging.

    Everything your GP just did relies on light. These are just some of the optical technologies that have had an enormous impact in how we diagnose disease.

    megaflopp/Shutterstock

    1. On-the-spot tests

    Point-of-care diagnostics allow doctors to test patients on the spot and get answers in minutes, rather than sending samples to a lab for analysis.

    The “flashlight” your GP uses to view the inside of your eye (known as an ophthalmoscope) is a great example. This allows doctors to detect abnormal blood flow in the eye, deformations of the cornea (the outermost clear layer of the eye), or swollen optical discs (a round section at the back of the eye where the nerve link to the brain begins). Swollen discs are a sign of elevated pressure inside your head (or in the worst case, a brain tumour) that could be causing your headaches.

    The invention of lasers and LEDs has enabled many other miniaturised technologies to be provided at the bedside or clinic rather than in the lab.

    Pulse oximetry is a famous example, where a clip attached to your finger reports how well your blood is oxygenated. It does this by measuring the different responses of oxygenated and de-oxygenated blood to different colours of light.

    Pulse oximetry is used at hospitals (and sometimes at home) to monitor your respiratory and heart health. In hospitals, it is also a valuable tool for detecting heart defects in babies.

    Pulse oximeter on finger of hospital patient, person holding patient's hand
    See that clip on the patient’s finger? That’s a pulse oximeter, which relies on light to monitor respiratory and heart health. CGN089/Shutterstock

    2. Looking at molecules

    Now, back to that blood test. Analysing a small amount of your blood can diagnose many different diseases.

    A machine called an automated “full blood count analyser” tests for general markers of your health. This machine directs focused beams of light through blood samples held in small glass tubes. It counts the number of blood cells, determines their specific type, and reports the level of haemoglobin (the protein in red blood cells that distributes oxygen around your body). In minutes, this machine can provide a snapshot of your overall health.

    For more specific disease markers, blood serum is separated from the heavier cells by spinning in a rotating instrument called a centrifuge. The serum is then exposed to special chemical stains and enzyme assays that change colour depending on whether specific molecules, which may be the sign of a disease, are present.

    These colour changes can’t be detected with the naked eye. However, a light beam from an instrument called a spectrometer can detect tiny amounts of these substances in the blood and determine if the biomarkers for diseases are present, and at what levels.

    Gloved hand holding tube containing blood sample, more tubes in rack in background
    Light shines through the blood sample and tells us whether biomarkers for disease are present. angellodeco/Shutterstock

    3. Medical imaging

    Let’s re-visit those medical images your GP ordered. The development of fibre-optic technology, made famous for transforming high-speed digital communications (such as the NBN), allows light to get inside the body. The result? High-resolution optical imaging.

    A common example is an endoscope, where fibres with a tiny camera on the end are inserted into the body’s natural openings (such as your mouth or anus) to examine your gut or respiratory tracts.

    Surgeons can insert the same technology through tiny cuts to view the inside of the body on a video screen during laparoscopic surgery (also known as keyhole surgery) to diagnose and treat disease.

    Endoscope tube
    Doctors can insert this flexible fibre-optic tube with a camera on the end into your body. Eduard Valentinov/Shutterstock

    How about the future?

    Progress in nanotechnology and a better understanding of the interactions of light with our tissues are leading to new light-based tools to help diagnose disease. These include:

    • nanomaterials (materials on an extremely small scale, many thousands of times smaller than the width of a human hair). These are being used in next-generation sensors and new diagnostic tests
    • wearable optical biosensors the size of your fingernail can be included in devices such as watches, contact lenses or finger wraps. These devices allow non-invasive measurements of sweat, tears and saliva, in real time
    • AI tools to analyse how blood serum scatters infrared light. This has allowed researchers to build a comprehensive database of scatter patterns to detect any cancer
    • a type of non-invasive imaging called optical coherence tomography for more detailed imaging of the eye, heart and skin
    • fibre optic technology to deliver a tiny microscope into the body on the tip of a needle.

    So the next time you’re at the GP and they perform (or order) some tests, chances are that at least one of those tests depend on light to help diagnose disease.

    Matthew Griffith, Associate Professor and ARC Future Fellow and Director, UniSA Microscopy and Microanalysis Facilities, University of South Australia

    This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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  • Cool As A Cucumber

    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.

    Cucumber Extract Beats Glucosamine & Chondroitin… At 1/135th Of The Dose?!

    Do you take glucosamine & chondroitin supplements for your bone-and-joint health?

    Or perhaps, like many, you take them intermittently because they mean taking several large tablets a day. Or maybe you don’t take them at all because they generally contain ingredients derived from shellfish?

    Cucumber extract has your back! (and your knees, and your hips, and…)

    It’s plant-derived (being from botanical cucumbers, not sea cucumbers, the aquatic animal!) and requires only 1/135th of the dosage to produce twice the benefits!

    Distilling the study to its absolute bare bones for your convenience:

    • Cucumber extract (10mg) was pitted against glucosamine & chondroitin (1350mg)
    • Cucumber extract performed around 50% better than G&C after 30 days
    • Cucumber extract performed more than 200% better than G&C after 180 days

    In conclusion, this study indicates that, in very lay terms:

    Cucumber extract blows glucosamine & chondroitin out of the water as a treatment and preventative for joint pain

    Curious To Know More? See The Study For Yourself!

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  • Building & Maintaining Mobility

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    Building & Maintaining Mobility!

    This is Juliet Starrett. She’s a CrossFit co-founder, and two-time white-water rafting world champion. Oh, and she won those after battling thyroid cancer. She’s now 50 years old, and still going strong, having put aside her career as a lawyer to focus on fitness. Specifically, mobility training.

    The Ready State

    Together with her husband Kelly, Starrett co-founded The Ready State, of which she’s CEO.

    It used to be called “Mobility WOD” (the “WOD” stands for “workout of the day”) but they changed their name as other companies took up the use of the word “mobility”, something the fitness world hadn’t previously focussed on much, and “WOD”, which was also hardly copyrightable.

    True to its origins, The Ready State continues to offer many resources for building and maintaining mobility.

    Why the focus on mobility?

    When was the last time you had to bench-press anything larger than a small child? Or squat more than your partner’s bodyweight? Or do a “farmer’s walk” with anything heavier than your groceries?

    For most of us, unless our lifestyles are quite extreme, we don’t need ridiculous strength (fun as that may be).

    You know what makes a huge difference to our quality of life though? Mobility.

    Have you ever felt that moment of panic when you reach for something on a high shelf and your shoulder or back twinges (been there!)? Or worse, you actually hurt yourself and the next thing you know, you need help putting your socks on (been there, too!)?

    And we say to ourselves “I’m not going to let that happen to me again”

    But how? How do we keep our mobility strong?

    First, know your weaknesses

    Starrett is a big fan of mobility tests to pinpoint areas that need more work.

    Most of her resources for this aren’t free, and we’re drawing heavily from her book here, so for your convenience, we’ll link to some third party sources for this:

    Next, eliminate those weaknesses

    Do mobility exercises in any weak areas, until they’re not weak:

    Want to train the full body in one session?

    Try out The Ready State’s 10-Minute Morning Mobility Routine

    Want to learn more?

    You might enjoy her book that we reviewed previously:

    Built to Move: The Ten Essential Habits to Help You Move Freely and Live Fully

    You might also enjoy The Ready State App, available for iOS and for Android:

    The Ready State Virtual Mobility Coach

    Enjoy!

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