Do Probiotics Work For Weight Loss?

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It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!

Have a question or a request? We love to hear from you!

In cases where we’ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future too—there’s always more to say!

As ever: if the question/request can be answered briefly, we’ll do it here in our Q&A Thursday edition. If not, we’ll make a main feature of it shortly afterwards!

So, no question/request too big or small

❝Can you talk about using probiotics for weight loss? Thanks❞

Great question! First, a quick catch-up:

How Much Difference Do Probiotic Supplements Make, Really?

Our above-linked article covers a number of important benefits of probiotic supplements, but we didn’t talk about weight loss at all. So let’s examine whether probiotics are useful for weight loss.

Up-front summary: the science is unclear

This 2021 systematic review found that they are indeed very effective:

❝The intake of probiotics or synbiotics could lead to significant weight reductions, either maintaining habitual lifestyle habits or in combination with energy restriction and/or increased physical activity for an average of 12 weeks.

Specific strains belonging to the genus Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium were the most used and those that showed the best results in reducing body weight.

Both probiotics and synbiotics have the potential to help in weight loss in overweight and obese populations.❞

Source: Effects of Probiotics and Synbiotics on Weight Loss in Subjects with Overweight or Obesity: A Systematic Review

This slightly older (2015) systematic review and meta-analysis found the opposite:

❝Collectively, the RCTs examined in this meta-analysis indicated that probiotics have limited efficacy in terms of decreasing body weight and BMI and were not effective for weight loss.❞

Source: Probiotics for weight loss: a systematic review and meta-analysis

And in case that’s not balanced enough, this 2020 randomized controlled trial got mixed results:

❝Regression analysis performed to correlate abundance of species following supplementation with body composition parameters and biomarkers of obesity found an association between a decrease over time in blood glucose and an increase in Lactobacillus abundance, particularly in the synbiotic group.

However, the decrease over time in body mass, BMI, waist circumstance, and body fat mass was associated with a decrease in Bifidobacterium abundance.❞

Source: Effects of Synbiotic Supplement on Human Gut Microbiota, Body Composition and Weight Loss in Obesity

Summary

Probiotics may or may not work for weight loss.

In all likelihood, it depends on the blend of cultures contained in the supplement. It’s possible that Lactobacillus is more beneficial for weight loss than Bifidobacterium, which latter may actually reduce weight loss.

Or it might not, because that was just one study and correlation ≠ causation!

We’d love to give you a hard-and-fast answer, but if the data doesn’t support a hard-and-fast answer, we’re not going to lie to you.

What we can say for sure though is that probiotics come with very many health benefits, so whether or not weight loss is one of them, they’re a good thing to have for most people.

Some further articles that may interest you:

Take care!

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  • How many vegetables influence brain waves and control brain states?

    Is it OK if my child eats lots of fruit but no vegetables?

    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.

    Does it seem like most vegetables you serve your children end up left on the plate, or worse, strewn across the floor? But mention dessert, and your fruit skewers are polished off in an instant.

    Or maybe the carrot and cucumber sticks keep coming home in your child’s lunchbox untouched, yet the orange slices are nowhere to be seen.

    If you’re facing these struggles with your child, you’re not alone. Many children prefer fruit to vegetables.

    So if your child eats lots of fruit but minimal or no vegetables, is that OK? And how can you get them to eat more veggies?

    Children have an innate preference for fruit

    The Australian Dietary Guidelines’ recommended daily intakes for vegetables and fruit depend on a child’s age.

    A chart showing the serving amounts of fruit and veg for ages 4-18.
    Fruit and vegetable serving sizes by age. The Conversation.
    National Health and Medical Research Council, CC BY-SA

    Consumption among Australian children falls well below recommendations. Around 62.6% of children aged over two meet the recommended daily fruit intake, but only 9% meet the recommended vegetable intake.

    This is not surprising given children have a natural preference for fruit. At least in part, this is due to its sweetness and texture, whether crispy, crunchy or juicy. The texture of fruit has been linked to a positive sensory experience among children.

    Vegetables, on the other hand, are more of an acquired taste, and certain types, such as cruciferous vegetables, can be perceived by children as bitter.

    The reason children often prefer fruit over vegetables could also be related to the parents’ preferences. Some research has even suggested we develop food preferences before birth based on what our mother consumes during pregnancy.

    Balance is key

    So, a preference for fruit is common. But is it OK if your child eats lots of fruit but little to no vegetables? This is a question we, as dietitians, get asked regularly.

    You might be thinking, at least my child is eating fruit. They could be eating no veggies and no fruit. This is true. But while it’s great your child loves fruit, vegetables are just as important as part of a balanced eating pattern.

    Vegetables provide us with energy, essential vitamins and minerals, as well as water and fibre, which help keep our bowels regular. They also support a strong immune system.

    If your child is only eating fruit, they are missing some essential nutrients. But the same is true if they are eating only veggies.

    Fruit likewise provides the body with a variety of essential vitamins and minerals, as well as phytochemicals, which can help reduce inflammation.

    Evidence shows healthy consumption of fruit and vegetables protects against chronic diseases including high blood pressure, heart disease and stroke.

    Consumed together, fruit and vegetables in a variety of colours provide different nutrients we need, some of which we can’t get from other foods. We should encourage kids to eat a “rainbow” of fruit and vegetables each day to support their growth and development.

    What if my child eats too much fruit?

    If your child is eating slightly more fruit than what’s recommended each day, it’s not usually a problem.

    Fruit contains natural sugar which is good for you. But too much of a good thing, even if it’s natural, can create problems. Fruit also contains virtually no fat and very little to no protein, both essential for a growing child.

    When overindulging in fruit starts to displace other food groups such as vegetables, dairy products and meat, that’s when things can get tricky.

    6 tips to get your kids to love vegetables

    1. Get them involved

    Take your child with you when you go shopping. Let them choose new vegetables. See if you can find vegetables even you haven’t tried, so you’re both having a new experience. Then ask them to help you with preparing or cooking the vegetables using a recipe you have chosen together. This will expose your child to veggies in a positive way and encourage them to eat more.

    2. Sensory learning

    Try to expose your child to vegetables rather than hiding them. Kids are more likely to eat veggies when they see, smell and feel them. This is called sensory learning.

    3. Have fun with food

    Use colourful vegetables of different sizes and textures. Make them fun by creating scenes or faces on your child’s plate. Add edible flowers or mint for decoration. You can even serve this with a side of veggie-based dip such as hummus or guacamole for some bonus healthy fats.

    4. Teach them to grow their own

    Teach your child how to grow their own vegetables. Evidence shows kids are more inclined to try the food they have helped and watched grow. You don’t need to have a big backyard to do this. A windowsill with a pot plant is a perfect start.

    5. Lead by example

    Your child learns from you, and your eating habits will influence theirs. Ensure they see you eating and enjoying veggies, whether in meals or as snacks.

    6. Practise persistence

    If your child refuses a particular vegetable once, don’t give up. It can take many attempts to encourage children to try a new food.The Conversation

    Yasmine Probst, Associate Professor, School of Medical, Indigenous and Health Sciences, University of Wollongong; Olivia Wills, Accredited Practising Dietitian, PhD candidate, University of Wollongong, and Shoroog Allogmanny, Accredited Practising Dietitian, PhD candidate, University of Wollongong

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

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  • New News From The Centenarian Blue Zones

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    From Blue To Green…

    We sometimes write about supercentenarians, which word is usually used in academia to refer to people who are not merely over 100 years of age, but over 110 years. These people can be found in many countries, but places where they have been found to be most populous (as a percentage of the local population) have earned the moniker “Blue Zones”—of which Okinawa and Sardinia are probably the most famous, but there are others too.

    This is in contrast to, for example “Red Zones”, a term often used for areas where a particular disease is endemic, or areas where a disease is “merely” epidemic, but particularly rife at present.

    In any case, back to the Blue Zones, where people live the longest and healthiest—because the latter part is important too! See also:

    • Lifespan: how long we live
    • Healthspan: how long we stay healthy (portmanteau of “healthy lifespan”)

    Most of our readers don’t live in a Blue Zone (in fact, many live in a COVID Red Zone, a diabetes Red Zone, and a heart disease Red Zone), but that doesn’t mean we can’t all take tips from the Blue Zones and apply them, for example:

    You may be wondering… How much good will this do me? And, we do have an answer for that:

    When All’s Said And Done, How Likely Are You To Live To 100?

    Now that we’re all caught-up…

    The news from the Blues

    A team of researchers did a big review of observational studies of centenarians and near-centenarians (aged 95+). Why include the near-centenarians, you ask? Well, most of the studies are also longitudinal, and if we’re doing an observational study of the impact of lifestyle factors on a 100-year-old, it’s helpful to know what they’ve been doing recently. Hence nudging the younger-end cutoff a little lower, so as to not begin each study with fresh-faced 100-year-olds whom we know nothing about.

    Looking at thousands of centenarians (and near-centenarians, but also including some supercentenarians, up the age of 118), the researchers got a lot of very valuable data, far more than we have room to go into here (do check out the paper at the bottom of this article, if you have time; it’s a treasure trove of data), but one of the key summary findings was a short list of four factors they found contributed the most to extreme longevity:

    1. A diverse diet with low salt intake: in particular, a wide variety of plant diversity, including protein-rich legumes, though fish featured prominently also. On average they got 57% and 65% of their energy intake from carbohydrates, 12% to 32% from protein, and 27% to 31% from fat. As for salt, they averaged 1.6g of sodium per day, which is well within the WHO’s recommendation of averaging under 2g of sodium per day. As a matter of interest, centenarians in Okinawa itself averaged 1.1g of sodium per day.
    2. Low medication use: obviously there may be a degree of non-causal association here, i.e. the same people who just happened to be healthier and therefore lived longer, correspondingly took fewer medications—they took fewer medications because they were healthier; they weren’t necessarily healthier because they took fewer medications. That said, overmedication can be a big problem, especially in places with a profit motive like the US, and can increase the risk of harmful drug interactions, and side effects that then need more medications to treat the side effects, as well as direct iatrogenic damage (i.e. this drug treats your condition, but as the cost of harming you in some other way). Naturally, sometimes we really do need meds, but it’s a good reminder to do a meds review with one’s doctor once in a while, and see if everything’s still of benefit.
    3. Getting good sleep: not shocking, and this one’s not exactly news. But what may be shocking is that 68% of centenarians reported consistently getting enough good-quality sleep. To put that into perspective, only 35% of 10almonds readers reported regularly getting sleep in the 7–9 hours range.
    4. Rural living environment: more than 75% of the centenarians and near-centenarians lived in rural areas. This is not usually something touted as a Blue Zones thing on lists of Blue zones things, but this review strongly highlighted it as very relevant. In the category of things that are more obvious once it’s pointed out, though, this isn’t necessarily such a difference between “country folk” and “city folk”, so much as the ability to regularly be in green spaces has well-established health benefits physically, mentally, and both combined (such as: neurologically).

    See: The health benefits of the great outdoors: A systematic review and meta-analysis of greenspace exposure and health outcomes

    And showing that yes, even parks in cities make a significant difference:

    The association of green space, tree canopy and parks with life expectancy in neighborhoods of Los Angeles

    Want to know more?

    You can read the study in full here:

    A systematic review of diet and medication use among centenarians and near-centenarians worldwide

    Take care!

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  • Sesame Chocolate Fudge

    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.

    If you’d like a sweet treat without skyrocketing your blood sugars with, well, rocket fuel… Today’s recipe can help you enjoy a taste of decadence that’s not bad for your blood sugars, and good for your heart and brain.

    You will need

    • ½ cup sesame seeds
    • ¼ cup cocoa powder
    • 3 tbsp maple syrup
    • 1 tbsp coconut oil (plus a little extra for the pan)

    Method

    (we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)

    1) Lightly toast the sesame seeds in a pan until golden brown. Remove from the heat and allow to cool.

    2) Put them in a food processor, and blend on full speed until they start to form a dough-like mixture. This may take a few minutes, so be patient. We recommend doing it in 30-second sessions with a 30-second rest between them, to avoiding overheating the motor.

    3) Add the rest of the ingredients and blend to combine thoroughly—this should go easily now and only take 10 seconds or so, but judge it by eye.

    4) Grease an 8″ square baking tin with a little coconut oil, and add the mixture, patting it down to fill the tin, making sure it is well-compressed.

    5) Allow to chill in the fridge for 6 hours, until firm.

    6) Turn the fudge out onto a chopping board, and cut into the size squares you want. Serve, or store in the fridge until ready to serve.

    Enjoy!

    Want to learn more?

    For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:

    Take care!

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  • Can You Get Addicted To MSG, Like With Sugar?

    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.

    Have a question or a request? We love to hear from you!

    In cases where we’ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future too—there’s always more to say!

    As ever: if the question/request can be answered briefly, we’ll do it here in our Q&A Thursday edition. If not, we’ll make a main feature of it shortly afterwards!

    So, no question/request too big or small 😎

    ❝Hello, I love your newsletter 🙂 Can I have a question? While browsing through your recepies, I realised many contained MSG. As someone based in Europe, I am not used to using MSG while cooking (of course I know that processed food bought in supermarket containes MSG). There is a stigma, that MSG is not particulary healthy, but rather it should be really bad and cause negative effects like headaches. Is this true? Also, can you get addicted to MSG, just like you get addicted to sugar? Thank you :)❞

    Thank you for the kind words, and the interesting questions!

    Short answer: no and no 🙂

    Longer answer: most of the negative reputation about MSG comes from a single piece of satire written in the US in the 1960s, which the popular press then misrepresented as a genuine concern, and the public then ran with, mostly due to racism/xenophobia/sinophobia specifically, given the US’s historically not fabulous relations with China, and the moniker of “Chinese restaurant syndrome”, notwithstanding that MSG was first isolated in Japan, not China, more than 100 years ago.

    The silver lining that comes out of this is that because of the above, MSG has been one of the most-studied food additives in recent decades, with many teams of scientists in many countries trying to determine its risks and not finding any (except insofar as anything in extreme quantities can kill you, including water or oxygen).

    You can read more about this and other* myths about MSG, here:

    Monosodium Glutamate: Sinless Flavor-Enhancer Or Terrible Health Risk?

    *such as pertaining to gluten sensitivity, which in reality MSG has no bearing on whatsoever as it does not contain gluten and is not even made of the same basic stuff; gluten being a protein made of (amongst other things) the amino acid glutamine, not a glutamate salt. Glutamate is as closely related to gluten as cyanocobalamin (vitamin B12) is to cyanide (the famous poison).

    PS: if you didn’t click the above link to read that article, then 1) we really do recommend it 2) we did some LD50 calculations there and looked at available research, and found that for someone of this writer’s (very medium) size, eating 1kg of MSG at once is sufficient to cause toxicity, and injecting >250g of MSG may cause heart problems. So we don’t recommend doing that.

    However, ½ tsp in a recipe that gives multiple portions is not going to get you anywhere close to the danger zone, unless you consume that entire meal by yourself hundreds of times per day. And if you do, the MSG is probably the least of your concerns.

    (2 tsp of cassia cinnamon, however, is enough to cause coumarin toxicity; for this reason we recommend Ceylon (or “True” or “Sweet”) cinnamon in our recipes, as it has almost undetectable levels of coumarin)

    With regard to your interesting question about addiction, first of all let’s speak briefly about sugar addiction:

    Sugar addiction is, by broad scientific consensus, agreed-upon as an extant thing that does exist, and contemporary research is more looking into the “hows” and “whys” and “whats” rather than the “whether”. It is a somewhat complicated topic, because it’s halfway between what science would usually consider a chemical addiction, and what science would usually consider a behavioral addiction:

    The Not-So-Sweet Science Of Sugar Addiction

    The reasonable prevailing hypothesis, therefore, is that sugar simply has two moderate mechanisms of addiction, rather than one strong one.

    The biochemical side of sugar addiction comes from the body’s metabolism of sugar, so this cannot be a thing for MSG, because there is nothing to metabolize in the same sense of the word (MSG being an inorganic compound with zero calories).

    People can crave salt, especially when deficient in it, and MSG does contain sodium (it’s what the “S” stands for), but it contains a little under ⅓ of the sodium that table salt does (sodium chloride in whatever form, be it sea salt, rock salt, or such):

    MSG vs. Salt: Sodium Comparison ← we do molecular calculations here!

    Sea Salt vs MSG – Which is Healthier? ← this one for a head-to-head

    However, even craving salt does not constitute an addiction; nobody is shamefully hiding their rock salt crystals under their bed and getting a fix when they feel low, and nor does withdrawal cause adverse side effects, except insofar as (once again) a person deficient in salt will crave salt.

    Finally, the only other way we know of that one might wonder if MSG could be addictive, is about glutamate and glutamate receptors. The glutamate in MSG is the same glutamate (down to the atoms) as the glutamate formed if one consumes tomatoes in the presence of salt, and triggers the same glutamate receptors in the same way. We have the same number of receptors either way, and uptake is exactly the same (because again, it’s exactly the same chemical) so there is a maximum to how strong this effect can be, and that maximum is the same whatever the source of the glutamate was.

    In this respect, if MSG is addictive, then so is a tomato salad with a pinch of salt: it’s not—it’s just tasty.

    We haven’t cited papers in today’s article, but it’s just because we cited them already in the articles we linked, and so we avoided doubling up. Most of them are in that first link we gave 🙂

    One final note

    Technically anyone can develop a sensitivity to anything, so in theory someone could develop a sensitivity to MSG, just like they could for any other ingredient. Our usual legal/medical disclaimer applies.

    However, it’s certainly not a common trigger, putting it well below common allergens like nuts (or less common allergens like, say, bananas), not even in the same league as common intolerances such as gluten, and less worthy of health risk warnings than, say, spinach (high in oxalates; fine for most people but best avoided if you have kidney problems).

    The reason we use it in the recipes we use it in, is simply because it’s a lower-sodium alternative to salt, and while it contains a (very) tiny bit less sodium than low-sodium salt (which itself has about ⅓ the sodium of regular salt), it has more of a flavor-enhancing effect, such that one can use half as much, for a more than sixfold total sodium reduction. Which for most of us in the industrialized world, is beneficial.

    Want to try some?

    If today’s article has inspired you to give MSG a try, here’s an example product on Amazon 😎

    Enjoy!

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  • Dried Apricots vs Dried Prunes – Which is Healthier?

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    Our Verdict

    When comparing dried apricots to dried prunes, we picked the prunes.

    Why?

    First, let’s talk hydration. We’ve described both of these as “dried”, but prunes are by default dried plums, usually partially rehydrated. So, for fairness, on the other side of things we’re also looking at dried apricots, partially rehydrated. Otherwise, it would look (mass for mass or volume for volume) like one is seriously outstripping the other even if some metric were actually equal, just because of water-weight in one and not the other.

    Illustrative example: consider, for example, that the sugar in a bunch of grapes or a handful of raisins can be the same, not because they magically got more sugary, but because the water was dried out, so per mass and per volume, there’s more sugar, proportionally.

    Back to dried apricots and dried prunes…

    You’ll often see these two next to each other in the heath food store, which is why we’re comparing them here.

    Of course, if it is practical, please by all means enjoy fresh apricots and fresh plums. But we know that life is not always convenient, fruits are not in season growing in abundance in our gardens all year round, and sometimes we’re stood in the aisle of a grocery store, weighing up the dried fruit options. 

    • Apricots are well-known for their zinc, potassium, and vitamin A.
    • Prunes are well-known for their fiber.

    But that’s not the whole story…

    • Apricots outperform prunes for vitamin A, and also vitamins C and E.
    • Prunes take first place for vitamins B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, and K, and also for minerals calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, sodium, and zinc.
    • Prunes also have about 3x the fiber, which at the very least offsets the fact that they have 3x the sugar.

    Once again, sugar in fruit is healthy (sugar in fruit juices is not*, though, so enjoy prunes rather than just prune juice, if you can) and can take its rightful place as providing a significant portion of our daily energy needs, if we let it.

    *It’s the same sugar, just the manner of delivery changes what it does to our liver and our pancreas; see:

    Which Sugars Are Healthier, And Which Are Just The Same?

    In summary…

    Dried apricots are great (fresh are even better), and yet prunes outperform them by most metrics on a like-for-like basis.

    Prunes have, on balance, a lot more vitamins and minerals, as well as more fiber and energy.

    Want to get some?

    Your local supermarket probably has them, and if you prefer having them delivered to your door, then here’s an example product on Amazon

    Enjoy!

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    Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!

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  • CBD Against Diabetes!

    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.

    It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!

    Have a question or a request? We love to hear from you!

    In cases where we’ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future too—there’s always more to say!

    As ever: if the question/request can be answered briefly, we’ll do it here in our Q&A Thursday edition. If not, we’ll make a main feature of it shortly afterwards!

    So, no question/request too big or small

    ❝CBD for diabetes! I’ve taken CBD for body pain. Did no good. Didn’t pay attention as to diabetes. I’m type 1 for 62 years. Any ideas?❞

    Thanks for asking! First up, for reference, here’s our previous main feature on the topic of CBD:

    CBD Oil: What Does The Science Say?

    There, we touched on CBD’s effects re diabetes:

    in mice / in vitro / in humans

    In summary, according to the above studies, it…

    • lowered incidence of diabetes in non-obese diabetic mice. By this they mean that pancreatic function improved (reduced insulitis and reduced inflammatory Th1-associated cytokine production). Obviously this has strong implications for Type 1 Diabetes in humans—but so far, just that, implications (because you are not a mouse).
    • attenuated high glucose-induced endothelial cell inflammatory response and barrier disruption. Again, this is promising, but it was an in vitro study in very controlled lab conditions, and sometimes “what happens in the Petri dish, stays in the Petri dish”—in order words, these results may or may not translate to actual living humans.
    • Improved insulin response ← is the main take-away that we got from reading through their numerical results, since there was no convenient conclusion given. Superficially, this may be of more interest to those with type 2 diabetes, but then again, if you have T1D and then acquire insulin resistance on top of that, you stand a good chance of dying on account of your exogenous insulin no longer working. In the case of T2D, “the pancreas will provide” (more or less), T1D, not so much.

    So, what else is there out there?

    The American Diabetes Association does not give a glowing review:

    ❝There’s a lot of hype surrounding CBD oil and diabetes. There is no noticeable effect on blood glucose (blood sugar) or insulin levels in people with type 2 diabetes. Researchers continue to study the effects of CBD on diabetes in animal studies. ❞

    ~ American Diabetes Association

    Source: ADA | CBD & Diabetes

    Of course, that’s type 2, but most research out there is for type 2, or else have been in vitro or rodent studies (and not many of those, at that).

    Here’s a relatively more recent study that echoes the results of the previous mouse study we mentioned; it found:

    ❝CBD-treated non-obese diabetic mice developed T1D later and showed significantly reduced leukocyte activation and increased FCD in the pancreatic microcirculation.

    Conclusions: Experimental CBD treatment reduced markers of inflammation in the microcirculation of the pancreas studied by intravital microscopy. ❞

    ~ Dr. Christian Lehmann et al.

    Read more: Experimental cannabidiol treatment reduces early pancreatic inflammation in type 1 diabetes

    …and here’s a 2020 study (so, more recent again) that was this time rats, and/but still more promising, insofar as it was with rats that had full-blown T1D already:

    Read in full: Two-weeks treatment with cannabidiol improves biophysical and behavioral deficits associated with experimental type-1 diabetes

    Finally, a paper in July 2023 (so, since our previous article about CBD), looked at the benefits of CBD against diabetes-related complications (so, applicable to most people with any kind of diabetes), and concluded:

    ❝CBDis of great value in the treatment of diabetes and its complications. CBD can improve pancreatic islet function, reduce pancreatic inflammation and improve insulin resistance. For diabetic complications, CBD not only has a preventive effect but also has a therapeutic value for existing diabetic complications and improves the function of target organs

    ~ Dr. Jin Zhang et al.

    …before continuing:

    ❝However, the safety and effectiveness of CBD are still needed to prove. It should be acknowledged that the clinical application of CBD in the treatment of diabetes and its complications has a long way to go.

    The dissecting of the pharmacology and therapeutic role of CBD in diabetes would guide the future development of CBD-based therapeutics for treating diabetes and diabetic complications❞

    ~ Ibid.

    Now, the first part of that is standard ass-covering, and the second part of that is standard “please fund more studies please”. Nevertheless, we must also not fail to take heed—little is guaranteed, especially when it comes to an area of research where the science is still very young.

    In summary…

    It seems well worth a try, and with ostensibly nothing to lose except the financial cost of the CBD.

    If you do, you might want to keep careful track of a) your usual diabetes metrics (blood sugar levels before and after meals, insulin taken), and b) when you took CBD, what dose, etc, so you can do some citizen science here.

    Lastly: please remember our standard disclaimer; we are not doctors, let alone your doctors, so please do check with your endocrinologist before undertaking any such changes!

    Want to read more?

    You might like our previous main feature:

    How To Prevent And Reverse Type 2 Diabetes ← obviously this will not prevent or reverse Type 1 Diabetes, but avoiding insulin resistance is good in any case!

    If you’re not diabetic and you’ve perhaps been confused throughout this article, then firstly thank you for your patience, and secondly you might like this quick primer:

    The Sweet Truth About Diabetes: Debunking Diabetes Myths! ← this gives a simplified but fair overview of types 1 & 2

    (for space, we didn’t cover the much less common types 3 & 4; perhaps another time we will)

    Meanwhile, take care!

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