Rice vs Buckwheat – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing rice to buckwheat, we picked the buckwheat.
Why?
It’s a simple one today:
- The vitamin and mineral profiles are very similar, so neither of these are a swaying factor
- In terms of macros, rice is higher in carbohydrates while buckwheat is higher in fiber
- Buckwheat also has more protein, but not by much
- Buckwheat has the lower glycemic index, and a lower insulin index, too
While buckwheat cannot always be reasonably used as a substitute for rice (often because the texture would not work the same), in many cases it can be.
And if you love rice, well, so do we, but variety is also the spice of life indeed, not to mention important for good health. You know that whole “eat 30 different plants per week” thing? Grains count in that tally! So substituting buckwheat in place of rice sometimes seems like a very good bet.
Not sure where to buy it?
Here for your convenience is an example product on Amazon
Want to know more about today’s topic?
Check out: Carb-Strong or Carb-Wrong?
Enjoy!
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Brain Power – by Michael Gelb & Kelly Howell
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What’s most important when it comes to brain health? Is it the right diet? Supplements? Brain-training? Attitude? Sleep? Physical exercise? Social connections? Something else?
This book covers a lot of bases, including all of the above and more. The authors are not scientists by training and this is not a book of science, so much as a book of aggregated science-based advice from other sources. The authors did consult with many scientists, and their input is shown throughout.
In the category of criticism, nothing here goes very deeply into the science, and there’s also nothing you wouldn’t find we’ve previously written about in a 10almonds article somewhere. But all the same, it’s good to have a wide variety of brain-healthy advices all in one place.
Bottom line: if you’re looking for a one-stop-shop “look after your brain as you age” guide, then this is a good one.
Click here to check out Brain Power, and improve your mind as you age!
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How To Stay A Step Ahead Of Peripheral Artery Disease
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Far less well-known than Coronary Artery Disease, it can still result in loss of life and limb (not in that order). Fortunately, there are ways to be on your guard:
What it is
Peripheral Artery Disease (PAD) is the same thing as Coronary Artery Disease (CAD), just, in the periphery—which by definition means “outside of the heart and brain”, but in practice, it starts with the extremities. And of the extremities, it tends to start with the feet and legs, for the simple reason that if someone’s circulation is sluggish, then because of gravity, that’s where’s going to get blocked first.
In both CAD and PAD, the usual root cause is atherosclerosis, that is to say, the build-up of fatty material inside the arteries, usually commensurate to LDL (“bad”) cholesterol, especially in men (high LDL is still a predictor of cardiovascular disease in women though, just more modestly so, at least pre-menopause or in cases of treated menopause whereby HRT has returned hormones to pre-menopause levels).
See also: Demystifying Cholesterol
And for that about sex differences: His & Hers: The Hidden Complexities of Statins and Cardiovascular Disease (CVD)
Why it is
This one’s straightforward, as it’s the same things as any kind of cardiovascular disease: high blood pressure, high cholesterol, older age, obesity, smoking, drinking, diabetes, and genetic factors (so, a risk factor is: family history of heart disease).
However, while those are the main causes and/or risk factors, it absolutely can still strike other people, so it’s as well to be watch out for…
What to look out for
Many people first notice signs and symptoms that turn out to be PAD when they experience pain or numbness in the foot or feet, and/or a discoloration of the feet (especially toes), and slow wound healing.
At that stage, chances are you will need to go urgently to a specialist, and surgery is a likely necessity. With a little luck, it’ll be a minimally-invasive surgery to unblock an artery; failing that, an amputation will be in order.
At that stage, under 50% will be alive 5 years from diagnosis:
You probably want to avoid those. Good news is, you can, by catching it earlier!
What to look out for before that
The most common test for PAD is one you can do at home, but enlisting a nurse to do it for you will help ensure accurate readings. It’s called the Ankle-Brachial Index (ABI) test, and it involves comparing the blood pressure in your ankle with the blood pressure in your arm, and expressing them as a ratio.
Here’s how to do it (instructions and a video demonstration if you want it):
Do Try This At Home: ABI Test For Clogged Arteries
If you need a blood pressure monitor, by the way, here’s an example product on Amazon.
- A healthy ABI score is between 1.0 and 1.4; anything outside this range may indicate arterial problems.
- Low ABI scores (below 0.8) suggest plaque is likely obstructing blood flow
- High ABI scores (above 1.4) may indicate artery hardening
Do note also that yes, if you have plaque obstructing blood flow and hardened arteries, your scores may cancel out and give you a “healthy” score, despite your arteries being very much not healthy.
For this reason, this test can be used to raise the alarm, but not to give the “all clear”.
There are other tests that clinicians can do for you, but you can’t do at home unless you have an MRI machine, a CT scanner, an x-ray machine, a doppler-and-ultrasound machine, etc. We’ll not go into those in detail here, but ask your doctor about them if you’re concerned.
What to do about it
In the mid-to-late stages of the disease, the options are medication and surgery, respectively, but your doctor will advise about those in that eventuality.
In the early stages of the disease, the first-line recommend treatment is exercise, of which, especially walking:
Lower Extremity Peripheral Artery Disease: Diagnosis and Treatment
Given that this more often happens when someone hasn’t been walking so much, it can be a walk-rest-walk approach at first (a treadmill on a low setting can be very useful for this):
See also: Exercise Comparison Head-to-Head: Treadmill vs Road
Take care!
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Our blood-brain barrier stops bugs and toxins getting to our brain. Here’s how it works
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Our brain is an extremely complex and delicate organ. Our body fiercely protects it by holding onto things that help it and keeping harmful things out, such as bugs that can cause infection and toxins.
It does that though a protective layer called the blood-brain barrier. Here’s how it works, and what it means for drug design.
The Conversation, Rattiya Thongdumhyu/Shutterstock, Petr Ganaj/Pexels First, let’s look at the circulatory system
Adults have roughly 30 trillion cells in their body. Every cell needs a variety of nutrients and oxygen, and they produce waste, which needs to be taken away.
Our circulatory system provides this service, delivering nutrients and removing waste.
Fenestrated capillaries let nutrients and waste pass through. Vectormine/Shutterstock Where the circulatory system meets your cells, it branches down to tiny tubes called capillaries. These tiny tubes, about one-tenth the width of a human hair, are also made of cells.
But in most capillaries, there are some special features (known as fenestrations) that allow relatively free exchange of nutrients and waste between the blood and the cells of your tissues.
It’s kind of like pizza delivery
One way to think about the way the circulation works is like a pizza delivery person in a big city. On the really big roads (vessels) there are walls and you can’t walk up to the door of the house and pass someone the pizza.
But once you get down to the little suburban streets (capillaries), the design of the streets means you can stop, get off your scooter and walk up to the door to deliver the pizza (nutrients).
We often think of the brain as a spongy mass without much blood in it. In reality, the average brain has about 600 kilometres of blood vessels.
The difference between the capillaries in most of the brain and those elsewhere is that these capillaries are made of specialised cells that are very tightly joined together and limit the free exchange of anything dissolved in your blood. These are sometimes called continuous capillaries.
Continuous capillaries limit the free exchange of anything dissolved in your blood. Vectormine/Shutterstock This is the blood brain barrier. It’s not so much a bag around your brain stopping things from getting in and out but more like walls on all the streets, even the very small ones.
The only way pizza can get in is through special slots and these are just the right shape for the pizza box.
The blood brain barrier is set up so there are specialised transporters (like pizza box slots) for all the required nutrients. So mostly, the only things that can get in are things that there are transporters for or things that look very similar (on a molecular scale).
The analogy does fall down a little bit because the pizza box slot applies to nutrients that dissolve in water. Things that are highly soluble in fat can often bypass the slots in the wall.
Why do we have a blood-brain barrier?
The blood brain barrier is thought to exist for a few reasons.
First, it protects the brain from toxins you might eat (think chemicals that plants make) and viruses that often can infect the rest of your body but usually don’t make it to your brain.
It also provides protection by tightly regulating the movement of nutrients and waste in and out, providing a more stable environment than in the rest of the body.
Lastly, it serves to regulate passage of immune cells, preventing unnecessary inflammation which could damage cells in the brain.
What it means for medicines
One consequence of this tight regulation across the blood brain barrier is that if you want a medicine that gets to the brain, you need to consider how it will get in.
There are a few approaches. Highly fat-soluble molecules can often pass into the brain, so you might design your drug so it is a bit greasy.
The blood-brain barrier stops many medicines getting into the brain. Ron Lach/Pexels Another option is to link your medicine to another molecule that is normally taken up into the brain so it can hitch a ride, or a “pro-drug”, which looks like a molecule that is normally transported.
Using it to our advantage
You can also take advantage of the blood brain barrier.
Opioids used for pain relief often cause constipation. They do this because their target (opioid receptors) are also present in the nervous system of the intestines, where they act to slow movement of the intestinal contents.
Imodium (Loperamide), which is used to treat diarrhoea, is actually an opioid, but it has been specifically designed so it can’t cross the blood brain barrier.
This design means it can act on opioid receptors in the gastrointestinal tract, slowing down the movement of contents, but does not act on brain opioid receptors.
In contrast to Imodium, Ozempic and Victoza (originally designed for type 2 diabetes, but now popular for weight-loss) both have a long fat attached, to improve the length of time they stay in the body.
A consequence of having this long fat attached is that they can cross the blood-brain barrier, where they act to suppress appetite. This is part of the reason they are so effective as weight-loss drugs.
So while the blood brain barrier is important for protecting the brain it presents both a challenge and an opportunity for development of new medicines.
Sebastian Furness, ARC Future Fellow, School of Biomedical Sciences, The University of Queensland
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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White Potato vs Sweet Potato – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing white potatoes to sweet potatoes, we picked the sweet potatoes.
Why?
In terms of macros, sweet potatoes are a little lighter on carbs and calories, though in the case of sugar and fiber, sweet potato has a few grams more of each, per potato. However, when an average sweet potato’s 7g of sugar are held against its 4g of fiber, this (much like with fruit!) not a sugar you need to avoid.
See also: Which Sugars Are Healthier, And Which Are Just The Same?
The glycemic index of a sweet potato is also lower than that of a white potato, so the sugars it does have are slower-release.
Sweet potatoes famously are good sources of vitamin A and beta-carotene, which important nutrients white potatoes cannot boast.
Both plants are equally good sources of potassium and vitamin C.
Summary
Both are good sources of many nutrients, and any nutritional health-hazards associated with them come with the preparation (for example, frying introduces unhealthy fats, and mashing makes the glycemic index skyrocket, and cooking with salt increases the salt content).
Baking either is great (consider stuffing them with delicious well-seasoned beans and/or tomatoes; if you make it yourself, pesto can be a great option too, as can cheese if you’re so-inclined and judicious with choice and quantity) and preserves almost all of their nutrients. Remember that nearly 100% of the fiber is in the skin, so you do want to eat that.
The deciding factor is: sweet potatoes are good sources of a couple more valuable nutrients that white potatoes aren’t, and come out as the overall healthiest for that reason.
Enjoy!
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Never Too Late To Start Over: Finding Purpose At Any Age
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Dana Findwell’s late 50s were not an easy time, but upon now hitting 60 (this week, at time of writing), she’s enthusiastically throwing herself into the things that bring her purpose, and so can you.
Start where you are
Findwell was already no stranger to starting again, having been married and divorced twice, and having moved frequently, requiring constant “life resets”.
Nevertheless, she always had her work to fall back on; she was a graphic designer and art director for 30 years… Until burnout struck.
And when burnout struck, so did COVID, resulting in the loss of her job. Her job wasn’t the only thing she lost though, as her mother died around the same time. All in all, it was a lot, and not the fun kind of “a lot”.
Struggling to find a new career direction, she ended up starting a small business for herself, so that she could direct the pace; pressing forwards as and when she had the energy. This became her new “ikigai“, the main thing that brings a sense of purpose to her life, but getting one part of her life back into order brought her attention to the rest; she realized she’d neglected her health, so she joined a gym. And a weightlifting class. And a hip-hop class. And she took up the practice of Japanese drumming (for the unfamiliar, this can be a rather athletic ability; it’s not a matter of sitting at a drum kit).
And now? Her future is still not clear, but that’s ok, because she’s making it as she goes, and she’s doing it her way, trusting in her ability to handle what may come up, and doing the things now that future-her will be glad of having done (e.g. laying the groundwork of both financial security and good health).
Change can sometimes be triggered by adverse circumstances, but there’s always the opportunity to find something better. For more on all of this, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
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Measles, Memory, & Mouths
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Three important items from this week’s health news:
It’s not about obesity
This news is based on a rodent study, so we don’t know for sure if it’s applicable to humans yet, but there’s no reason to expect that it won’t be.
The crux of the matter is that while it’s long been assumed that when it comes to diet and cognitive decline, obesity is the main driver of problems, it turns out that rats fed a high fat diet—for three days or three months—did much worse in memory tests.
This was observed in older rats, but not in younger ones—the researchers hypothesized that the younger rats benefited from their ability to activate compensatory anti-inflammatory responses, which the older rats could not.
Notably, the three-day window of high-fat diet wasn’t sufficient to cause any metabolic problems or obesity yet, but markers of neuroinflammation skyrocketed immediately, and memory test scores declined at the same rate:
Read in full: High-fat diet could cause memory problems in older adults after just a few days
Related: Can Saturated Fats Be Healthy?
Vax, Lies, & Mortality Rates
Measles is making a comeback in the US.
100 cases were reported in Gaines county, TX, recently, with 1 death there so far (an unvaccinated child). And of course, it’s spreading; in the neighboring Lea county, NM, they now have an outbreak of 30 confirmed cases, and 1 death there so far (an unvaccinated adult).
This comes with the rise of the anti-vax movement which comes with a lot of misleading rhetoric (and some things that are simply factually incorrect), and an increase in “measles parties” whereby children are deliberately exposed to measles in order to “get it out of the way” and confer later immunity. That technically does work if everyone survives, but the downside is your child may die:
Read in full: New Mexico reports 30 measles cases a day after second US death in decade
Related: 4 Ways Vaccine Skeptics Mislead You on Measles and More
What your gums say about your hormones
Times of hormonal change (so, including menopause) can show in one’s gums,
❝Recent research shows that 84% of women over 50 did not know that menopause could affect their oral health; 70% of menopausal women reported at least one new oral health symptom (like dry mouth or sensitive gums), yet only 2% had discussed these issues with their dentist.❞
Because gum disease can progress painlessly for a long while, it’s very important to stay on top of any changes, and look for the cause (enlisting the help of your doctor and/or dentist), lest you find yourself very far into periodontal disease when it could have been stopped and reversed much more easily before getting that bad.
Different life stages’ hormonal changes have different effects; the article we’ll link below also list puberty, menstrual variations, and pregnancy, but for brevity we’ll just quote what they say about menopause:
❝Menopause: the hormonal changes of menopause—primarily the drop in estrogen—can lead to oral health issues. Many menopausal women experience dry mouth, which increases the risk of cavities and gum disease, since saliva helps protect teeth. Gums may also recede or become more sensitive, and some women feel burning sensations in the mouth or changes in taste.❞
As for the rest…
Read in full: Gum health: A key indicator of women’s overall well-being
Related: How To Regrow Receding Gums
Take care!
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