Red Cabbage vs Brussels Sprouts – Which is Healthier?
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.
Our Verdict
When comparing red cabbage to Brussels sprouts, we picked the sprouts.
Why?
First let’s note that we have an interesting comparison today, because these two plants are the exact same species (and indeed, also the exact same species as broccoli, cauliflower. and kale)—just a different cultivar. All of these plants and more are simply cultivars of Brassica oleracea.
Them being the same species notwithstanding, there are nutritional differences:
In terms of macros, the sprouts have more than 2x the protein, slightly more carbs, and nearly 2x the fiber. An easy win for sprouts here.
Looking at vitamins next, red cabbage has more vitamin A (whence the color), while Brussels sprouts have more of vitamins B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, B7, B9, C, E, K, and choline. Another easy win for sprouts.
In the category of minerals, red cabbage has a tiny bit more calcium, while Brussels sprouts have more copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, and zinc—while being literally just a few mg/100g behind red cabbage on calcium anyway. So, once again, sprouts are sweeping the victory.
Both vegetables are a rich source of assorted polyphenols; for most polyphenols, Brussels sprouts scores higher—an exception being that red cabbage is very slightly higher in quercetin. So, we’ll call this category a win for Brussels sprouts, too.
In short: enjoy both; diversity is great and so is pretty much any iteration of Brassica oleracea. Standing next to Brussels sprouts made red cabbage look bad, but we assure you that cabbage in general is a nutritional powerhouse, and in this case it was hot the heels of sprouts in most of those micronutrients. If you’re going to pick one though, the Brussels sprouts are indeed the more nutritionally dense.
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
Sprout Your Seeds, Grains, Beans, Etc ← sprout your Brassica oleracea, too!
Take care!
Don’t Forget…
Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!
Learn to Age Gracefully
Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:
A Urologist Explains Edging: What, Why, & Is It Safe?
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.
“Edging” is the practice of intentionally delaying orgasm, which can be enjoyed by anyone, with a partner or alone.
On the edge
Urologist Dr. Rena Malik explains:
Question: why?
Answer: the more tension is built up, the stronger the orgasm can be at the end of it. And, even before then, pleasure along the way is pleasure along the way, which is generally considered a good thing—especially for any (usually but not always women, for hormonal and social reasons) who find it difficult to orgasm. It’s also a great way to experiment and learn more about one’s own body and/or that of one’s partner(s), personal responses, and so forth. Also, for any (usually but not always men, for hormonal reasons) who find they usually orgasm sooner than they’d like, it’s a great way to change that, if changing that is what’s wanted.
Bonus answer: for some (usually but not always men, for hormonal reasons) who find they have an uncomfortable slump in mood after orgasm, that can simply be skipped entirely, postponed for another time, etc, with pleasure being derived from the sexual activity rather than orgasm. That way, there’s a lasting dopamine high, with no prolactin crash afterwards ← this is very much tied to male hormones, by the way. If you have female hormones, there’s usually no prolactin crash either way, and instead, the post-orgasm spike in oxytocin is stronger, and a wave of serotonin makes the later decline of dopamine much more gentle.
Question: can it cause any problems?
Answer: yep! Or rather, subjectively, it may be considered so—this is obviously a personal matter and your mileage may vary. The main problem it may cause is that if practised habitually, it may result in greater difficulty achieving orgasm, simply because the body has got used to “ok, when we do this (sex/masturbation), we are in no particular rush to do that (orgasm)”. So whether not this would be a worry for you is down to any given individual. Lastly, if your intent was a long edging session with an orgasm at the end and then something happened to interrupt that, then your orgasm may be unintentionally postponed to another time, which again, may be more or less of an issue depending on your feelings about that.
For more on these things including advice on how to try it, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
- Mythbusting The Big O ← 10almonds main feature on orgasms, health, and associated myths
- Come Together: The Science (and Art) of Creating Lasting Sexual Connections – by Dr. Emily Nagoski
- Better Sex Through Mindfulness: How Women Can Cultivate Desire – by Dr. Lori Brotto
Take care!
Share This Post
Sleep Tracking, For Five Million Nights
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.
5 Sleep Phenotypes, By Actual Science
You probably know people can be broadly divided into “early birds” and “night owls”:
Early Bird Or Night Owl? Genes vs Environment
…and then the term “hummingbird” gets used for a person who flits between the two.
That’s three animals so far. If you read a book we reviewed recently, specifically this one:
The Power of When – by Dr. Michael Breus
…then you may have used the guide within to self-diagnose your circadian rhythm type (chronotype) according to Dr. Breus’s system, which divides people into bears, lions, wolves, and dolphins.
That’s another four animals. If you have a FitBit, it can “diagnose” you with being those and/or a menagerie of others, such as giraffe, hedgehog, parrot, and tortoise:
How Fitbit Developed the Sleep Profile Experience (Part 2 – Sleep Animals)
Five million nights
A team of researchers recently took a step away from this veritable zoo of 11 different animals and counting, and used a sophisticated modelling system to create a spatial-temporal map of people’s sleep habits, and this map created five main “islands” that people’s sleep habits could settle on, or sometimes move from island to island.
Those “five million nights” by the way? It was actually 5,095,798 nights! You might notice that would take from the 2020s to the 15970s to complete, so this was rather a matter of monitoring 33,152 individuals between January and October of the same year. Between them, they got those 5,095,798 nights of sleep (or in some cases, nights of little or no sleep, but still, they were there for the nights).
The five main phenotypes that the researchers found were:
- What we think of as “normal” sleep. In this phenotype, people get about eight hours of uninterrupted sleep for at least six days in a row.
- As above for half the nights, but they only sleep for short periods of time in bouts of less than three hours the other half.
- As per normal sleep, but with one interrupted night per week, consisting of a 5 hour sleep period and then broken sleep for a few more hours.
- As per normal sleep generally, but with occasional nights in which long bouts of sleep are separated by a mid-sleep waking.
- Sleeping for very short periods of time every night. This phenotype was the rarest the researchers found, and represents extremely disrupted sleep.
As you might suspect, phenotype 1 is healthier than phenotype 5. But that’s not hugely informational, as the correlation between getting good sleep and having good health is well-established. So, what did the study teach us?
❝We found that little changes in sleep quality helped us identify health risks. Those little changes wouldn’t show up on an average night, or on a questionnaire, so it really shows how wearables help us detect risks that would otherwise be missed.❞
More specifically,
❝We found that the little differences in how sleep disruptions occur can tell us a lot. Even if these instances are rare, their frequency is also telling. So it’s not just whether you sleep well or not – it’s the patterns of sleep over time where the key info hides❞
…and, which gets to the absolute point,
❝If you imagine there’s a landscape of sleep types, then it’s less about where you tend to live on that landscape, and more about how often you leave that area❞
In other words: if your sleep pattern is not ideal, that’s one thing and it’d probably be good to address it, by improving your sleep. However, if your sleep pattern changes phenotype without an obvious known reason why, this may be considered an alarm bell warning of something else that needs addressing, which may be an underlying illness or condition—meaning it can be worthwhile being a little extra vigilant when it comes to regular health screenings, in case something new has appeared.
Want to read more?
You can read the paper in full here:
Five million nights: temporal dynamics in human sleep phenotypes
Take care!
Share This Post
Planning Ahead For Better Sleep
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.
Sleep: 6 Dimensions And 24 Hours!
This is Dr. Lisa Matricciani, a sleep specialist from the University of South Australia, where she teaches in the School of Health Sciences.
What does she want us to know?
Healthy sleep begins before breakfast
The perfect bedtime routine is all well and good, but we need to begin much earlier in the day, Dr. Matricciani advises.
Specifically, moderate to vigorous activity early in the day plays a big part.
Before breakfast is best, but even midday/afternoon exercise is associated with better sleep at night.
Read more: Daytime Physical Activity is Key to Unlocking Better Sleep
Plan your time well to sleep—but watch out!
Dr. Matricciani’s research has also found that while it’s important to plan around getting a good night’s sleep (including planning when this will happen), allocating too much time for sleep results in more restless sleep:
❝Allocating more time to sleep was associated with earlier sleep onsets, later sleep offsets, less efficient and more consistent sleep patterns for both children and adults.❞
Read more: Time use and dimensions of healthy sleep: A cross-sectional study of Australian children and adults
(this was very large study involving 1,168 children and 1.360 adults, mostly women)
What counts as good sleep quality? Is it just efficiency?
It is not! Although that’s one part of it. You may remember our previous main feature:
The 6 Dimensions Of Sleep (And Why They Matter)
Dr. Matricciani agrees:
❝Everyone knows that sleep is important. But when we think about sleep, we mainly focus on how many hours of sleep we get, when we should also be looking at our sleep experience as a whole❞
Read more: Trouble sleeping? You could be at risk of type 2 diabetes
That’s not a cheery headline, but here’s her paper about it:
And no, we don’t get a free pass on getting less sleep / less good quality sleep as we get older (alas):
Why You Probably Need More Sleep
So, time to get planning for the best sleep!
Enjoy videos?
Here’s how 7News Australia broke the news of Dr. Matricciani’s more recent work:
Rest well!
Share This Post
Related Posts
The Inflamed Mind – by Dr. Edward Bullmore
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.
Firstly, let’s note that this book was published in 2018, so the “radical new” approach is more like “tried and tested and validated” now.
Of course, inflammation in the brain is also linked to Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and other neurodegenerative disorders, but that’s not the main topic here.
Dr. Bullmore, a medical doctor, psychiatrist, and neuroscientist with half the alphabet after his name, knows his stuff. We don’t usually include author bio information here, but it’s also relevant that he has published more than 500 scientific papers and is one of the most highly cited scientists worldwide in neuroscience and psychiatry.
What he explores in this book, with a lot of hard science made clear for the lay reader, is the mechanisms of action of depression treatments that aren’t just SSRIs, and why anti-inflammatory approaches can work for people with “treatment-resistant depression”.
The book was also quite prescient in its various declarations of things he expects to happen in the field in the next five years, because they’ve happened now, five years later.
Bottom line: if you’d like to understand how the mind and body affect each other in the cases of inflammation and depression, with a view to lessening either or both of those things, this is a book for you.
Click here to check out The Inflamed Mind, and take good care of yours!
Don’t Forget…
Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!
Learn to Age Gracefully
Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:
Pistachios vs Walnuts – Which is Healthier?
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.
Our Verdict
When comparing pistachios to walnuts, we picked the pistachios.
Why?
Pistachios have more protein and fiber, while walnuts have more fat (though the fats are famously healthy, the same is true of the fats in pistachios).
In the category of vitamins, pistachios have several times more* of vitamins A, B1, B6, C, and E, while walnuts boast only a little more of vitamin B9. They are approximately equal on other vitamins they both contain.
*actually 25x more vitamin A, but the others are 2x, 3x, 4x more.
When it comes to minerals, things are more even; pistachios have more iron, phosphorus, potassium, and selenium, while walnuts have more copper, magnesium, manganese, and zinc. So this category’s a tie.
So given two clear wins for pistachios, and one tie, it’s evident that pistachios win the day.
However! Do enjoy both of these nuts; we often mention that diversity is good in general, and in this case, it’s especially true because of the different mineral profiles, and also because in terms of the healthy fats that they offer, pistachios offer more monounsaturated fats and walnuts offer more polyunsaturated fats; both are healthy, just different.
They’re about equal on saturated fat, in case you were wondering, as it makes up about 6% of the total fats in both cases.
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
Why You Should Diversify Your Nuts
Take care!
Don’t Forget…
Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!
Learn to Age Gracefully
Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:
Yes, you do need to clean your tongue. Here’s how and why
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.
Has your doctor asked you to stick out your tongue and say “aaah”? While the GP assesses your throat, they’re also checking out your tongue, which can reveal a lot about your health.
The doctor will look for any changes in the tongue’s surface or how it moves. This can indicate issues in the mouth itself, as well as the state of your overall health and immunity.
But there’s no need to wait for a trip to the doctor. Cleaning your tongue twice a day can help you check how your tongue looks and feels – and improve your breath.
luisrsphoto/Shutterstock What does a healthy tongue look like?
Our tongue plays a crucial role in eating, talking and other vital functions. It is not a single muscle but rather a muscular organ, made up of eight muscle pairs that help it move.
The surface of the tongue is covered by tiny bumps that can be seen and felt, called papillae, giving it a rough surface.
These are sometimes mistaken for taste buds – they’re not. Of your 200,000-300,000 papillae, only a small fraction contain taste buds. Adults have up to 10,000 taste buds and they are invisible to the naked eye, concentrated mainly on the tip, sides and back of the tongue. https://www.youtube.com/embed/uYvpUl7li9Y?wmode=transparent&start=0
A healthy tongue is pink although the shade may vary from person to person, ranging from dark to light pink.
A small amount of white coating can be normal. But significant changes or discolouration may indicate a disease or other issues.
How should I clean my tongue?
Cleaning your tongue only takes around 10-15 seconds, but it’s is a good way to check in with your health and can easily be incorporated into your teeth brushing routine.
Build-up can occur if you stop brushing or scraping your tongue even for a few days. Anthony Shkraba/Pexels You can clean your tongue by gently scrubbing it with a regular toothbrush. This dislodges any food debris and helps prevent microbes building up on its rough textured surface.
Or you can use a special tongue scraper. These curved instruments are made of metal or plastic, and can be used alone or accompanied by scrubbing with your toothbrush.
Your co-workers will thank you as well – cleaning your tongue can help combat stinky breath. Tongue scrapers are particularly effective at removing the bacteria that commonly causes bad breath, hidden in the tongue’s surface.
What’s that stuff on my tongue?
So, you’re checking your tongue during your twice-daily clean, and you notice something different. Noting these signs is the first step. If you observe any changes and they worry you, you should talk to your GP.
Here’s what your tongue might be telling you.
White coating
Developing a white coating on the tongue’s surface is one of the most common changes in healthy people. This can happen if you stop brushing or scraping the tongue, even for a few days.
In this case, food debris and microbes have accumulated and caused plaque. Gentle scrubbing or scraping will remove this coating. Removing microbes reduces the risk of chronic infections, which can be transferred to other organs and cause serious illnesses.
Scrubbing or scraping your tongue only takes around ten seconds and can be done while brushing your teeth. Ketut Subiyanto/Pexels Yellow coating
This may indicate oral thrush, a fungal infection that leaves a raw surface when scrubbed.
Oral thrush is common in elderly people who take multiple medications or have diabetes. It can also affect children and young adults after an illness, due to the temporary suppression of the immune system or antibiotic use.
If you have oral thrush, a doctor will usually prescribe a course of anti-fungal medication for at least a month.
Black coating
Smoking or consuming a lot of strong-coloured food and drink – such as tea and coffee, or dishes with tumeric – can cause a furry appearance. This is known as a black hairy tongue. It’s not hair, but an overgrowth of bacteria which may indicate poor oral hygiene.
Smoking can add to poor oral hygiene and make the tongue look black. Sophon Nawit/Shutterstock Pink patches
Pink patches surrounded by a white border can make your tongue look like a map – this is called “geographic tongue”. It’s not known what causes this condition, which usually doesn’t require treatment.
Pain and inflammation
A red, sore tongue can indicate a range of issues, including:
- nutritional deficiencies such as folic acid or vitamin B12
- diseases including pernicious anaemia, Kawasaki disease and scarlet fever
- inflammation known as glossitis
- injury from hot beverages or food
- ulcers, including cold sores and canker sores
- burning mouth syndrome.
Dryness
Many medications can cause dry mouth, also called xerostomia. These include antidepressants, anti-psychotics, muscle relaxants, pain killers, antihistamines and diuretics. If your mouth is very dry, it may hurt.
What about cancer?
White or red patches on the tongue that can’t be scraped off, are long-standing or growing need to checked out by a dental professional as soon as possible, as do painless ulcers. These are at a higher risk of turning into cancer, compared to other parts of the mouth.
Oral cancers have low survival rates due to delayed detection – and they are on the rise. So checking your tongue for changes in colour, texture, sore spots or ulcers is critical.
Dileep Sharma, Professor and Head of Discipline – Oral Health, University of Newcastle
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Don’t Forget…
Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!
Learn to Age Gracefully
Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:
