Proteins Of The Week
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This week’s news round-up is, entirely by chance, somewhat protein-centric in one form or another. So, check out the bad, the very bad, the mostly good, the inconvenient, and the worst:
Mediterranean diet vs the menopause
Researchers looked at hundreds of women with an average age of 51, and took note of their dietary habits vs their menopause symptoms. Most of them were consuming soft drinks and red meat, and not good in terms of meeting the recommendations for key food groups including vegetables, legumes, fruit, fish and nuts, and there was an association between greater adherence to Mediterranean diet principles, and better health.
Read in full: Fewer soft drinks and less red meat may ease menopause symptoms: Study
Related: Four Ways To Upgrade The Mediterranean Diet
Listeria in meat
This one’s not a study, but it is relevant important news. The headline pretty much says it all, so if you don’t eat meat, this isn’t one you need to worry about any further than that. If you do eat meat, though, you might want to check out the below article to find out whether the meat you eat might be carrying listeria:
Read in full: Almost 10 million pounds of meat recalled due to Listeria danger
Related: Frozen/Thawed/Refrozen Meat: How Much Is Safety, And How Much Is Taste?
Brawn and brain?
A study looked at cognitively healthy older adults (of whom, 57% women), and found an association between their muscle strength and their psychological wellbeing. Note that when we said “cognitively healthy”, this means being free from dementia etc—not necessarily psychologically health in all respects, such as also being free from depression and enjoying good self-esteem.
Read in full: Study links muscle strength and mental health in older adults
Related: Staying Strong: Tips To Prevent Muscle Loss With Age
The protein that blocks bone formation
This one’s more clinical but definitely of interest to any with osteoporosis or at high risk of osteoporosis. Researchers identified a specific protein that blocks osteoblast function, thus more of this protein means less bone production. Currently, this is not something that we as individuals can do anything about at home, but it is promising for future osteoporosis meds development.
Read in full: Protein blocking bone development could hold clues for future osteoporosis treatment
Related: Which Osteoporosis Medication, If Any, Is Right For You?
Rabies risk
People associate rabies with “rabid dogs”, but the biggest rabies threat is actually bats, and they don’t even need to necessarily bite you to confer the disease (it suffices to have licked the skin, for instance—and bats are basically sky-puppies who will lick anything). Because rabies has a 100% fatality rate in unvaccinated humans, this is very serious. This means that if you wake up and there’s a bat in the house, it doesn’t matter if it hasn’t bitten anyone; get thee to a hospital (where you can get the vaccine before the disease takes hold; this will still be very unpleasant but you’ll probably survive so long as you get the vaccine in time).
Read in full: What to know about bats and rabies
Related: Dodging Dengue In The US ← much less serious than rabies, but still not to be trifled with—particularly noteworthy if you’re in an area currently affected by floodwaters or even just unusually heavy rain, by the way, as this will leave standing water in which mosquitos breed.
Take care!
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No Time to Panic – by Matt Gutman
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Matt Gutman is not a doctor or a psychologist. He’s a journalist, accustomed to asking questions and then asking more probing questions, unrelenting until he gets the answers he’s looking for.
This book is the result of what happened when he needed to overcome his own anxiety and panic attacks, and went on an incisive investigative journey.
The style is as clear and accessible as you’d expect of a journalist, and presents a very human exploration, nonetheless organized in a way that will be useful to the reader.
It’s said that “experience is a great teacher, but she sends hefty bills”. In this case as in many, it’s good to learn from someone else’s experience!
By the end of the book, you’ll have a good grounding in most approaches to dealing with anxiety and panic attacks, and an idea of efficacy/applicability, and what to expect.
Bottom line: without claiming any magic bullet, this book presents six key strategies that Gutman found to work, along with his experiences of what didn’t. Valuable reading if you want to curb your own anxiety, or want to be able to help/support someone else with theirs.
Click here to check out No Time To Panic, and find the peace you deserve!
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Lycopene’s Benefits For The Gut, Heart, Brain, & More
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What Doesn’t Lycopene Do?
Lycopene is an antioxidant carotenoid famously found in tomatoes; it actually appears in even higher levels in watermelon, though. If you are going to get it from tomato, know that cooking improves the lycopene content rather than removing it (watermelon, on the other hand, can be enjoyed as-is and already has the higher lycopene content).
Antioxidant properties
Let’s reiterate the obvious first, for the sake of being methodical and adding a source. Lycopene is a potent antioxidant with multiple health benefits:
Lycopene: A Potent Antioxidant with Multiple Health Benefits
…and as such, it does all the things you might reasonably expect and antioxidant to do. For example…
Anti-inflammatory properties
In particular, it regulates macrophage activity, reducing inflammation while improving immune response:
Lycopene Regulates Macrophage Immune Response through the Autophagy Pathway Mediated by RIPK1
As can be expected of most antioxidants and anti-inflammatory agents, it also has…
Anticancer properties
Scientific papers tend to be “per cancer type”, so we’re just going to give one example, but there’s pretty much evidence for its utility against most if not all types of cancer. We’re picking prostate cancer though, as it’s one that’s been studied the most in the context of lycopene intake—in this study, for example, it was found that men who enjoyed at least two servings of lycopene-rich tomato sauce per week were 30% less likely to develop prostate cancer than those who didn’t:
Dietary lycopene intake and risk of prostate cancer defined by ERG protein expression
If you’d like to see something more general, however, then check out:
Potential Use of Tomato Peel, a Rich Source of Lycopene, for Cancer Treatment
It also fights Candida albicans
Ok, this is not (usually) so life-and-death as cancer, but reducing our C. albicans content (specifically: in our gut) has a lot of knock-on effects for other aspects of our health, so this isn’t one to overlook:
The title does not make this clear, but yes: this does mean it has an antifungal effect. We mention this because often cellular apoptosis is good for an overall organism, but in this case, it simply kills the Candida.
It’s good for the heart
A lot of studies focus just on triglyceride markers (which lycopene improves), but more tellingly, here’s a 10-year observational study in which diets rich in lycopene were associated to a 17–26% lower risk of heart disease:
Relationship of lycopene intake and consumption of tomato products to incident CVD
…and a 39% overall reduced mortality in, well, we’ll let the study title tell it:
…which means also:
It’s good for the brain
As a general rule of thumb, what’s good for the heart is good for the brain (because the brain needs healthy blood flow to stay healthy, and is especially vulnerable when it doesn’t get that), and in this case that rule of thumb is also borne out by the post hoc evidence, specifically yielding a 31% decreased incidence of stroke:
Dietary and circulating lycopene and stroke risk: a meta-analysis of prospective studies
Is it safe?
As a common food product, it is considered very safe.
If you drink nothing but tomato juice all day for a long time, your skin will take on a reddish hue, which will go away if you stop getting all your daily water intake in tomato juice.
In all likelihood, even if you went to extremes, you would get sick from the excess of vitamin A (generally present in the same foods) sooner than you’d get sick from the excess of lycopene.
Want to try some?
We don’t sell it, and also we recommend simply enjoying tomatoes, watermelons, etc, but if you do want a supplement, here’s an example product on Amazon
Enjoy!
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What’s in the supplements that claim to help you cut down on bathroom breaks? And do they work?
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With one in four Australian adults experiencing problems with incontinence, some people look to supplements for relief.
With ingredients such as pumpkin seed oil and soybean extract, a range of products promise relief from frequent bathroom trips.
But do they really work? Let’s sift through the claims and see what the science says about their efficacy.
Christian Moro/Shutterstock What is incontinence?
Incontinence is the involuntary loss of bladder or bowel control, leading to the unintentional leakage of urine or faeces. It can range from occasional minor leaks to a complete inability to control urination and defecation.
This condition can significantly impact daily activities and quality of life, and affects women more often than it affects men.
Some people don’t experience bladder leakage but can sometimes feel an urgent need to go to the bathroom. This is known as overactive bladder syndrome, and occurs when the muscles around the bladder tighten on their own, which greatly reduces its capacity. The result is the person feels the need to go to the bathroom much more frequently.
There are many potential causes of incontinence and overactive bladders, including menopause, pregnancy and child birth, urinary tract infections, pelvic floor disorders, and an enlarged prostate. Conditions such as diabetes, neurological disorders and certain medications (such as diuretics, sleeping pills, antidepressants and blood-pressure drugs) can also contribute.
While pelvic muscle rehabilitation and behavioural techniques for bladder retraining can be helpful, some people are interested in pharmaceutical solutions.
What’s in these products?
A number of supplements are available in Australia that include ingredients used in traditional medicine for urinary incontinence and overactive bladders. The three most common ingredients are:
- Cucurbita pepo (pumpkin seed extract)
- glycine max (soybean extract)
- an extract from the bark of the Crateva magna or nurvala (Varuna) tree.
The supplements have common ingredients. Author How are they supposed to work?
Pumpkin seeds are rich in plant sterols that are thought to reduce the testosterone-related enlargement of the prostate, as well as having broader anti-inflammatory effects. The seed extracts can also contain oleic acid, which may help increase bladder capacity by relaxing the muscles around the organ.
Soybean extracts are rich in isoflavones, especially daidzen and genistein. Like olieic acid, these are thought to act on the muscles around the bladder. Because isoflavones are similar in structure to the female hormone oestrogen, soy extracts may be most beneficial for postmenopausal women who have overactive bladders.
Crateva extract is rich in lupeol- and sterol-based chemicals which have strong anti-inflammatory effects. This has benefits not just for enlarged prostates but possibly also for reducing urinary tract infections.
Do they actually work?
It’s important to note that the government has only approved these types of supplements as “listed medicines”. This means the ingredients have only been assessed for safety. The companies behind the products have not had to provide evidence they actually work.
A 2014 clinical trial examined a combined pumpkin seed and soybean extract called cucurflavone on people with overactive bladders. The 120 participants received either a placebo or a daily 1,000mg dose of the herbal mixture over a period of 12 weeks.
By the end of study, those in the cucurflavone group went to the bathroom around three fewer times per day, compared with people in the control group, who only went to the bathroom on average one fewer time each day.
In a different trial, researchers examined a combination of Crateva bark extract with herbal extracts of horsetail and Japanese evergreen spicebush, called Urox.
For the 150 participants, the Urox formulation helped participants go to the bathroom less frequently when compared with placebo treatment.
After eight weeks of treatment, participants in the placebo group were going to the bathroom to urinate 11 times per day. Those in the Urox group were only going around to 7.5 times per day. And those who took Urox also needed to go to the bathroom one fewer time during the night.
Finally, another study also examined a Creteva, horsetail and Japanese spicebush combination, but this time in children. They were given either a 420mg dose of the supplement or a placebo, and then monitored for how many times they wet the bed.
After two months of taking the supplement, slightly more than 40% of the 24 kids in the supplement group wet the bed less often.
While these results may look promising, there are considerable limitations to the studies which means the data may not be reliable. For example, the trials didn’t include enough participants to have reliable data. To conclusively provide efficacy, final-stage clinical trials require data for between 300 and 3,000 patients.
From the studies, it is also not clear whether some participants were also taking other medicines as well as the supplement. This is important, as medications can interfere with how the supplements work, potentially making them less or more effective.
What if you want to take them?
If you have incontinence or an overactive bladder, you should always discuss this with your doctor, as it may due to a serious or treatable underlying condition.
Otherwise, your GP may give you strategies or exercises to improve your bladder control, prescribe medications or devices, or refer you to a specialist.
If you do decide to take a supplement, discuss this with your doctor and local pharmacist so they can check that any product you choose will not interfere with any other medications you may be taking.
Nial Wheate, Professor of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Macquarie University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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The Lost Art of Silence – by Sarah Anderson
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From “A Room Of One’s Own” to “Silent Mondays”, from spiritual retreats to noise-cancelling headphones, this book covers the many benefits of silence—and a couple of downsides too.
In an age where most things are available at the touch of a button, a little peaceful solitude can come at quite a premium, but what it offers can effect all manner of physical changes, from reduced stress responses to increased neurogenesis (growing new brain cells).
The tone throughout is a combination of personal and pop-science, and it’s very motivating to find a little more space-between-the-things in life.
The book is best enjoyed in a quiet room.
Bottom line: if you get the feeling sometimes that you could rest and recover fully and properly if you could just find the downtime, this book will help you find exactly that.
Click here to check out the Lost Art of Silence, and find peace and strength in it!
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Paulina Porizkova (Former Supermodel) Talks Menopause, Aging, & Appearances
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Are supermodels destined to all eventually become “Grizabella the Glamor Cat”, a washed-up shell of their former glory? Is it true that “men grow cold as girls grow old, and we all lose our charms in the end”? And what—if anything—can we do about it?
Insights from a retired professional
Paulina Porizkova is 56, and she looks like she’s… 56, maybe? Perhaps a little younger or a bit older depending on the camera and lighting and such.
It’s usually the case, on glossy magazine covers and YouTube thumbnails, that there’s a 20-year difference between appearance and reality, but not here. Why’s that?
Porizkova noted that many celebrities of a similar age look younger, and felt bad. But then she noted that they’d all had various cosmetic work done, and looked for images of “real” women in their mid-50s, and didn’t find them.
Note: we at 10almonds do disagree with one thing here: we say that someone who has had cosmetic work done is no less real for it; it’s a simple matter of personal choice and bodily autonomy. She is, in our opinion, making the same mistake as people make when they say such things as “real people, rather than models”, as though models are not also real people.
Porizkova found modelling highly lucrative but dehumanizing, and did not enjoy the objectification involved—and she enjoyed even less, when she reached a certain age, negative comments about aging, and people being visibly wrong-footed when meeting her, as they had misconceptions based on past images.
As a child and younger adult through her modelling career, she felt very much “seen and not heard”, and these days, she realizes she’s more interesting now but feels less seen. Menopause coincided with her marriage ending, and she felt unattractive and ignored by her husband; she questioned her self-worth, and felt very bad about it. Then her husband (they had separated, but had not divorced) died, and she felt even more isolated—but it heightened her sensitivity to life.
In her pain and longing for recognition, she reached out through her Instagram, crying, and received positive feedback—but still she struggles with expressing needs and feeling worthy.
And yet, when it comes to looks, she embraces her wrinkles as a form of expression, and values her natural appearance over cosmetic alterations.
She describes herself as a work in progress—still broken, still needing cleansing and healing, but proud of how far she’s come so far, and optimistic with regard to the future.
For all this and more in her own words, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
The Many Faces Of Cosmetic Surgery
Take care!
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The Mental Health First-Aid That You’ll Hopefully Never Need
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Take Your Mental Health As Seriously As General Health!
Sometimes, health and productivity means excelling—sometimes, it means avoiding illness and unproductivity. Both are essential, and today we’re going to tackle some ground-up stuff. If you don’t need it right now, great; we suggest to read it for when and if you do. But how likely is it that you will?
- One in four of us are affected by serious mental health issues in any given year.
- One in five of us have suicidal thoughts at some point in our lifetime.
- One in six of us are affected to at least some extent by the most commonly-reported mental health issues, anxiety and depression, in any given week.
…and that’s just what’s reported, of course. These stats are from a UK-based source but can be considered indicative generally. Jokes aside, the UK is not a special case and is not measurably worse for people’s mental health than, say, the US or Canada.
While this is not an inherently cheery topic, we think it’s an important one.
Depression, which we’re going to focus on today, is very very much a killer to both health and productivity, after all.
One of the most commonly-used measures of depression is known by the snappy name of “PHQ9”. It stands for “Patient Health Questionnaire Nine”, and you can take it anonymously online for free (without signing up for anything; it’s right there on the page already):
Take The PHQ9 Test Here! (under 2 minutes, immediate results)
There’s a chance you took that test and your score was, well, depressing. There’s also a chance you’re doing just peachy, or maybe somewhere in between. PHQ9 scores can fluctuate over time (because they focus on the past two weeks, and also rely on self-reports in the moment), so you might want to bookmark it to test again periodically. It can be interesting to track over time.
In the event that you’re struggling (or: in case one day you find yourself struggling, or want to be able to support a loved one who is struggling), some top tips that are useful:
Accept that it’s a medical condition like any other
Which means some important things:
- You/they are not lazy or otherwise being a bad person by being depressed
- You/they will probably get better at some point, especially if help is available
- You/they cannot, however, “just snap out of it”; illness doesn’t work that way
- Medication might help (it also might not)
Do what you can, how you can, when you can
Everyone knows the advice to exercise as a remedy for depression, and indeed, exercise helps many. Unfortunately, it’s not always that easy.
Did you ever see the 80s kids’ movie “The Neverending Story”? There’s a scene in which the young hero Atreyu must traverse the “Swamp of Sadness”, and while he has a magical talisman that protects him, his beloved horse Artax is not so lucky; he slows down, and eventually stops still, sinking slowly into the swamp. Atreyu pulls at him and begs him to keep going, but—despite being many times bigger and stronger than Atreyu, the horse just sinks into the swamp, literally drowning in despair.
See the scene: The Neverending Story movie clip – Artax and the Swamp of Sadness (1984)
Wow, they really don’t make kids’ movies like they used to, do they?
But, depression is very much like that, and advice “exercise to feel less depressed!” falls short of actually being helpful, when one is too depressed to do it.
If you’re in the position of supporting someone who’s depressed, the best tool in your toolbox will be not “here’s why you should do this” (they don’t care; not because they’re an uncaring person by nature, but because they are physiologically impeded from caring about themself at this time), but rather:
“please do this with me”
The reason this has a better chance of working is because the depressed person will in all likelihood be unable to care enough to raise and/or maintain an objection, and while they can’t remember why they should care about themself, they’re more likely to remember that they should care about you, and so will go with your want/need more easily than with their own. It’s not a magic bullet, but it’s worth a shot.
What if I’m the depressed person, though?
Honestly, the same, if there’s someone around you that you do care about; do what you can to look after you, for them, if that means you can find some extra motivation.
But I’m all alone… what now?
Firstly, you don’t have to be alone. There are free services that you can access, for example:
- US: https://nami.org/help
- Canada: https://www.wellnesstogether.ca/en-CA
- UK: https://www.samaritans.org/
…which varyingly offer advice, free phone services, webchats, and the like.
But also, there are ways you can look after yourself a little bit; do the things you’d advise someone else to do, even if you’re sure they won’t work:
- Take a little walk around the block
- Put the lights on when you’re not sleeping
- For that matter, get out of bed when you’re not sleeping. Literally lie on the floor if necessary, but change your location.
- Change your bedding, or at least your clothes
- If changing the bedding is too much, change just the pillowcase
- If changing your clothes is too much, change just one item of clothing
- Drink some water; it won’t magically cure you, but you’ll be in slightly better order
- On the topic of water, splash some on your face, if showering/bathing is too much right now
- Do something creative (that’s not self-harm). You may scoff at the notion of “art therapy” helping, but this is a way to get at least some of the lights on in areas of your brain that are a little dark right now. Worst case scenario is it’ll be a distraction from your problems, so give it a try.
- Find a connection to community—whatever that means to you—even if you don’t feel you can join it right now. Discover that there are people out there who would welcome you if you were able to go join them. Maybe one day you will!
- Hiding from the world? That’s probably not healthy, but while you’re hiding, take the time to read those books (write those books, if you’re so inclined), learn that new language, take up chess, take up baking, whatever. If you can find something that means anything to you, go with that for now, ride that wave. Motivation’s hard to come by during depression and you might let many things slide; you might as well get something out of this period if you can.
If you’re not depressed right now but you know you’re predisposed to such / can slip that way?
Write yourself instructions now. Copy the above list if you like.
Most of all: have a “things to do when I don’t feel like doing anything” list.
If you only take one piece of advice from today’s newsletter, let that one be it!
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