Red-dy For Anything Polyphenol Salad
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.
So, you’ve enjoyed your Supergreen Superfood Salad Slaw, and now you’re ready for another slice of the rainbow. Pigments in food aren’t just for decoration—they each contain unique benefits! Today’s focus is on some red foods that, combined, make a deliciously refreshing salad that’s great for the gut, heart, and brain.
You will need
- 1 cup crème fraîche or sour cream (if vegan, use our Plant-Based Healthy Cream Cheese recipe, and add the juice of 1 lime)
- ½ small red cabbage, thinly sliced
- 1 red apple, cored and finely chopped
- 1 red onion, thinly sliced
- 10 oz red seedless grapes, halved
- 10 oz red pomegranate seeds
- 1 tsp red chili flakes
Method
(we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)
1) Combine all the red ingredients in a big bowl.
2) Add the crème fraîche and mix gently but thoroughly.
3) If you have time, let it sit in the fridge for 48 hours before enjoying, as its colors will intensify and its polyphenols will become more bioavailable. But if you want/need, you can serve immediately; that’s fine too.
Enjoy!
Want to learn more?
For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:
- Resveratrol & Healthy Aging
- Tasty Polyphenols For Your Heart And Brain
- Pomegranate vs Cherries – Which is Healthier?
- Capsaicin For Weight Loss And Against Inflammation
Take care!
Don’t Forget…
Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!
Recommended
Learn to Age Gracefully
Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:
-
Herbs for Evidence-Based Health & Healing
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.
Herbs for Evidence-Based Health & Healing
Herbs have been used since prehistoric times to treat injuries and illnesses, but which ones actually work, as opposed to being “old wives’ tales”?
Even today, in pharmacies herbals products may come with a disclaimer “based on traditional use only”, which, in scientific terms, means it likely performs no better than placebo.
This is a “Saturday Life Hacks” edition, not a “Research Review Monday”, so we won’t be doing any deep-dives today, and will instead keep things short and snappy. We’ll also spotlight one main benefit, rather than trying to cover all bases, as we often have room to do on a Monday!
Basil
Helps boost immunity:
Chamomile
Significantly reduces symptoms of osteoarthritis:
(This one challenged your writer’s resolve as it does so many things, it was hard to pick just one. So, she went with one that’s less known that “settling the stomach” and “relieving PMS” and “relaxation” and so forth)
Echinacea
Significantly reduces the risk of catching a cold (but won’t help once you’ve caught it):
Echinacea for preventing and treating the common cold
Elderberry
Significantly hastens recovery from upper respiratory viral infections:
Evening Primrose
Fights neuropathy, along with many other benefits:
An updated review on pharmacological activities and phytochemical constituents of evening primrose
Fennel
Antinflammatory, along with many other benefits:
Ginkgo biloba
Antioxidant effects provide anti-aging benefits:
Advances in the Studies of Ginkgo Biloba Leaves Extract on Aging-Related Diseases
Ginseng
Combats fatigue:
Ginseng as a Treatment for Fatigue: A Systematic Review
Lavender
Enjoyed for its sedative effects, which is really does have:
Evidence for Sedative Effects of the Essential Oil of Lavender after Inhalation
Sage
Helps fight HIV type 1 and Herpes simplex type 2 (and probably other viruses, but that’s what we have the science for right now):
Aqueous extracts from peppermint, sage and lemon balm leaves display potent anti-HIV-1 activity
Valerian
Inconclusive data; “traditional use only” for restful sleep.
Can’t have everything!
Share This Post
-
Simple, 10-Minute Hip Opening Routine
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.
Hips Feeling Stiff?
If so, Flow with Adee’s video (below) has just the solution with a quick 10-minute hip-opening routine. Designed for intermediates but open to all, we love Adee’s work and recommend that you reach out to her to tell her what you’d like to see next.
Other Methods
If you’re a book lover, we’ve reviewed a fantastic book on reducing hip pain. Alternatively, learn stretching from a ballerina with Jasmine McDonald’s ballet stretching routine.
Otherwise, enjoy today’s video:
How was the video? If you’ve discovered any great videos yourself that you’d like to share with fellow 10almonds readers, then please do email them to us!
Share This Post
-
Glucomannan For Weight Loss, Gut Health, & More
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.
Glucomannan is a water-soluble dietary fiber found in the root of the konjac plant.
If you’ve had konjac noodles, also called shirataki, that’s what those are mostly made of, and it’s why they have next-to-no calories.
You may be wondering: if it’s water-soluble, how do the noodles not dissolve in water? And the answer is that the noodle-making process involves making a gel out of the fiber and water, which is then extruded into noodle shapes. In this gelatinous form, they’re fairly stable (it’s one of the most viscous dietary fibers), but yes, if you were to boil them for a long time, they would indeed turn the entire liquid contents of the saucepan into gel.
How it works for weight loss
Because of its viscosity, adding even a small amount of powdered* glucomannan to a glass of water will turn the whole thing into gel in seconds. This means that if you take glucomannan capsules with a glass of water, then so far as your stomach is concerned, you just ate a cup of gel, and the water is now processed as food, staying longer in the stomach than it otherwise would, and promoting feelings of fullness.
*i.e. dry powder, not in a gelatinous form like the noodles
As for its efficacy in weight loss, see for example:
❝Glucomannan was well-tolerated and resulted in significant weight loss in overweight and obese individuals❞
Read more: Glucomannan and obesity: a critical review
So, that covers the basic requirements, but may be wondering: does it have other benefits? And the answer is yes, it does:
❝Glucomannan appears to beneficially affect total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, triglycerides, body weight, and fasting blood glucose❞
To further corroborate that and comment on safety…
❝Results showed a significant mean weight loss using glucomannan over an eight-week period. Serum cholesterol and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol were significantly reduced in the glucomannan treated group. No adverse reactions to glucomannan were reported.❞
Read more: Effect of glucomannan on obese patients: a clinical study
As to whether other gel-making agents work the same way, the answer is no, they don’t seem to:
❝Glucomannan induced body weight reduction in healthy overweight subjects, whereas the addition of guar gum and alginate did not seem to cause additional loss of weight❞
Read more: Experiences with three different fiber supplements in weight reduction
How it works for gut health
In the words of Dr. Yu Li et al.,
❝Konjaku flour can achieve positive effects on treating obesity, which manifest on reducing BMI, fat mass, blood glucose, and blood lipid, improving hepatic function, and also regulating intestinal microfloral structure.
Therefore, changes in gut microbiota may explain in part the effects of konjaku flour.❞
Read in full: Effects of Konjaku Flour on the Gut Microbiota of Obese Patients
This has extra positive knock-on effects too:
Want to try some?
We don’t sell it, but here for your convenience are example products on Amazon:
Konjac noodles | Glucomannan capsules
Enjoy!
Share This Post
Related Posts
-
Younger Next Year – by Chris Crowley & Dr. Henry Lodge
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.
Is it diet and exercise? Well, of course that’s a component. Specific kinds of exercise, too. But, as usual when we feature a book, there’s more:
In this case, strong throughout is the notion of life being a marathon not a sprint—and training for it accordingly.
Doing the things now that you’ll really wish you’d started doing sooner, and finding ways to build them into daily life.
Not just that, though! The authors take a holistic approach to life and health, and thus also cover work life, social life, and so forth. Now, you may be thinking “I’m already in the 80 and beyond category; I don’t work” and well, the authors advise that you do indeed work. You don’t have to revamp your career, but science strongly suggests that people who work longer, live longer.
Of course that doesn’t have to mean going full-throttle like a 20-year-old determined to make their mark on the world (you can if you want, though). It could be volunteering for a charity, or otherwise just finding a socially-engaging “work-like” activity that gives you purpose.
About the blend of motivational pep talk and science—this book is heavily weighted towards the former. It has, however, enough science to keep it on the right track throughout. Hence the two authors! Crowley for motivational pep, and Dr. Lodge for the science (with extra input from brain surgeon Dr. Hamilton, too).
Bottom line: if you want to feel the most prepared possible for the coming years and decades, this is a great book that covers a lot of bases.
Click here to check out “Younger Next Year” and get de-aging!
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:
-
How To Heal And Regrow Receding Gums
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? You can always hit “reply” to any of our emails, or use the feedback widget at the bottom!
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
❝Hey Sheila – As always, your articles are superb !! So, I have a topic that I’d love you guys to discuss: green tea. I used to try + drink it years ago but I always got an allergic reaction to it. So the question I’d like answered is: Will I still get the same allergic reaction if I take the capsules ? Also, because it’s caffeinated, will taking it interfere with iron pills, other vitamins + meds ? I read that the health benefits of the decaffeinated tea/capsules are not as great as the caffeinated. Any info would be greatly appreciated !! Thanks much !!❞
Hi! I’m not Sheila, but I’ll answer this one in the first person as I’ve had a similar issue:
I found long ago that taking any kind of tea (not herbal infusions, but true teas, e.g. green tea, black tea, red tea, etc) on an empty stomach made me want to throw up. The feeling would subside within about half an hour, but I learned it was far better to circumvent it by just not taking tea on an empty stomach.
However! I take an l-theanine supplement when I wake up, to complement my morning coffee, and have never had a problem with that. Of course, my physiology is not your physiology, and this “shouldn’t” be happening to either of us in the first place, so it’s not something there’s a lot of scientific literature about, and we just have to figure out what works for us.
This last Monday I wrote (inspired in part by your query) about l-theanine supplementation, and how it doesn’t require caffeine to unlock its benefits after all, by the way. So that’s that part in order.
I can’t speak for interactions with your other supplements or medications without knowing what they are, but I’m not aware of any known issue, beyond that l-theanine will tend to give a gentler curve to the expression of some neurotransmitters. So, if for example you’re talking anything that affects that (e.g. antidepressants, antipsychotics, ADHD meds, sleepy/wakefulness meds, etc) then checking with your doctor is best.
❝Can you do something on collagen and keep use posted on pineapple, and yes love and look forward to each issue❞
Glad you’re enjoying! We did write a main feature on collagen a little while back! Here it is:
We Are Such Stuff As Fish Are Made Of
As for pineapple, there’s not a lot to keep you posted about! Pineapple’s protein-digesting, DNA-unzipping action is well-established and considered harmless (if your mouth feels weird when you eat pineapple or drink pineapple juice, this is why, by the way) because no meaningful damage was done.
For example:
- Pineapple’s bromelain action is akin to taking apart a little lego model brick by brick (easy to fix)
- Clastogenic genotoxicity is more like taking a blowtorch to the lego model (less easy to fix)
Fun fact: pineapple is good against inflammation, because of the very same enzyme!
❝I never knew anything about the l- tea. Where can I purchase it?❞
You can get it online quite easily! Here’s an example on Amazon
❝The 3 most important exercises don’t work if you can’t get on the floor. I’m 78, and have knee replacements. What about 3 best chair yoga stretches? Love your articles!❞
Here are six!
We turn the tables and ask you a question!
We’ll then talk about this tomorrow:
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:
-
Unfuck Your Brain – by Dr. Faith Harper
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 book takes a trauma-informed care approach, which is relatively novel in the mental health field and it’s quickly becoming the industry standard because of its effectiveness.
The basic premise of trauma-informed care is that you had a bad experience (possibly even more than one—what a thought!) and that things that remind you of that will tend to prompt reactivity from you in a way that probably isn’t healthy. By identifying each part of that process, we can then interrupt it, much like we might with CBT (the main difference being that CBT, for all its effectiveness, tends to assume that the things that are bothering you are not true, while TIC acknowledges that they might well be, and that especially historically, they probably were).
A word of warning: if something that triggers a trauma-based reactivity response in you is people swearing, then this book will either cure you by exposure therapy or leave you a nervous wreck, because it’s not just the title; Dr. Harper barely gets through a sentence without swearing. It’s a lot, even by this (European) reviewer’s standards (we’re a lot more relaxed about swearing over here, than people tend to be in America).
On the other hand, something that Dr. Harper excels at is actually explaining stuff very well. So while it sometimes seems like she’s “trying too hard” style-wise in terms of being “not like other therapists”, in her defence she’s nevertheless a very good writer; she knows her stuff, and knows how to communicate it clearly.
Bottom line: if you don’t mind a writer who swears more than 99% of soldiers, then this book is an excellent how-to guide for self-administered trauma-informed care.
Click here to check out Unfuck Your Brain, and indeed unfuck it!
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:
