Salmon vs Tuna – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing salmon to tuna, we picked the tuna.
Why?
It’s close, and there are merits and drawbacks to both!
In terms of macros, tuna is higher in protein, while salmon is higher in fats. How healthy are the fats, you ask? Well, it’s a mix, because while there are plenty of “good” fats in salmon, salmon is also 10x higher in saturated fat and 150% higher in cholesterol.
So when it comes to fats, if you want to eat fish and have the healthiest fats, one option is to skip the salmon, and instead serve tuna with some extra virgin olive oil.
We’ll call this section a clear win for tuna.
On the vitamin front, they are close to equal. Salmon has more of some vitamins, tuna has more of others; all in all we’d say the balance is in salmon’s favor, but by the time a portion of salmon is giving you 350% of your daily requirement, does it really matter that the same portion of tuna is “only” giving you 294% of the daily requirement? It goes like that for a lot of the vitamins they both contain.
Still, we’ll call this section a nominal win for salmon.
In the category of minerals, tuna is much higher in iron while salmon is higher in calcium. The rest of the minerals they both have, tuna is comfortably higher—and since the “% of RDA in a portion” figures are double-digit here rather than triple, those margins are relevant this time.
We’ll call this section a moderate win for tuna.
Both fish carry a risk of mercury poisoning, but this varies more by location than by fish, so it hasn’t been a consideration in this head-to-head.
Totting up the sections, this a modest but clear win for tuna.
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
Farmed Fish vs Wild-Caught: Important Differences!
Take care!
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The 9-Day Liver Detox Diet – by Patrick Holford
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While the author is not “Dr. Patrick Holford”, it’s worth mentioning that he is a career nutritionist with half the alphabet after his name, and decades of experience in the field.
Now, about the detox diet: being well-informed 10almonds readers, you probably know that most detox diets do little to nothing, and your liver detoxes itself; that is literally one of its main jobs.
However! Depending on diet and lifestyle, sometimes it can get a backlog of work, and then it starts struggling. We wrote about that in our article: How To Unfatty A Fatty Liver.
The premise of this book is in the largest part very similar to what we wrote there, and it’s about giving your liver a metabolic break, for which it will be grateful and use the slack to do its own internal clean-up and regeneration.
The way Holford recommends doing this is consistent with what we’ve written before, just, in a lot more detail because it’s a whole book. It’s also more extreme, because it’s a 9-day thing rather than our usual focus on sustainability, so for example he’ll often say “cut out” many things where we have often said “reduce” or “avoid”.
In few words:
- Cut out foods with a high glycemic load (e.g. most starches and sugars)
- Cut out foods that are known to be inflammatory (e.g. meat and dairy)
- Enjoy foods that have anti-inflammatory properties (e.g. foods high in antioxidants)
He offers a dietary approach (and of course, a 9-day meal plan, with recipes), and also recommends a lot of supplements. However, if you don’t love taking supplements, then the diet plan is already just fine.
Oddly, he does include a chapter on reintroducing all the “bad” things, which seems like a strange thing to choose to do especially in the cases of things like alcohol if you literally just quit it, but of course it’s an option.
The style is quite old-school pop-science, but still very readable, easy to navigate if looking for specific things, and there’s a bibliography as well as a resource list at the back.
Bottom line: if you’d like to take radical short-term action to improve your liver health quickly, this book will indeed help you to do that!
Click here to check out The 9-Day Liver Detox Diet, and give your liver a chance to get better!
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Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? – by Dr. Julie Smith
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Superficially, this can be called a “self-help” book, but that undersells it rather. It’s a professionally-written (as in, by a professional psychologist) handbook full of resources. Its goal? Optimizing your mental health to help you stay resilient no matter what life throws your way.
While the marketing of this book is heavily centered around Dr. Smith’s Internet Celebrity™ status, a lot of her motivation for writing it seems to be precisely so that she can delve deeper into the ideas that her social media “bites” don’t allow room for.
Many authors of this genre pad their chapters with examples; there are no lengthy story-telling asides here, and her style doesn’t need them. She knows her field well, and knows well how to communicate the ideas that may benefit the reader.
The main “meat” of the book? Tips, tricks, guides, resources, systems, flowcharts, mental frameworks, and “if all else fails, do this” guidance. The style of the book is clear and simple, with very readable content that she keeps free from jargon without “dumbing down” or patronizing the reader.
All in all, a fine set of tools for anyone’s “getting through life” toolbox.
Get Your Personal Copy Of “Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before?” on Amazon Now!
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If You Sit 8 Hours a Day, Do This Before Bed
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Undo the damage of sitting:
Time to hit “reset”
Passive stretching doesn’t work for this purpose because holding static positions after a full day of sitting doesn’t retrain your nervous system, so your body stays locked in the same trying-to-be-protective patterns.
Thus, what’s actually needed is to move through tension dynamically to give your nervous system new information instead of waiting for muscles to relax.
Step by step:
- Ground decompression: move into child’s pose with lateral reaches to create space through your rib cage, your spine, and your hips while breathing calmly.
- Spinal wave movement: transition slowly from cat cow into downward dog to restore segment-by-segment spinal motion and improve overall spinal health.
- Hip and low-back release: lie on your back and circle your knees gently to let your hips move freely while your lower back relaxes into the floor.
- Slow flow hip control: circle your hips in quadruped to relearn independent hip movement instead of moving your spine and hips as one unit.
- Dynamic hip flexor opening: rock forwards, backwards, and side to side in a low lunge to teach your hip flexors to lengthen and shorten actively.
- Active pigeon movement: lean and shift through pigeon to release hip tension using motion rather than static pressure.
- Rotational hip recovery: transition smoothly through 90-90 positions to restore internal and external hip rotation lost from prolonged sitting.
- Posterior chain integration: bridge gently from a supine pigeon position to connect release through your hips, your glutes, and your spine.
- Nervous system downregulation: rock slowly in happy baby to signal safety, reduce residual tension, and prepare your body for sleep.
For more on all of thus plus some visual demonstrations that are quicker and more effective than explaining some of the poses in words alone, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like:
Stand Up For Your Health (Or Don’t) ← our main feature on this also includes more things you can do if you must sit, to make sitting less bad!
Take care!
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How Healthy Are Afternoon Naps?
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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!
No question/request too big or small 😎
❝Is it good for the health to take afternoon naps? Or is it better to just sleep at night?❞
It depends on you! There are potential benefits to napping, for example:
- Increased alertness
- Helps with learning
- Improved memory
- Boost to immunity
- Enhance athletic performance
Generally considered best is simply the famous 7–9 hours at night (yes, including at older ages): Why You Probably Need More Sleep
…and sleep efficiency does matter too: Why 7 Hours Sleep Is Not Enough
…which in turn, is influenced by factors other than just length and depth: The 6 Dimensions Of Sleep (And Why They Matter)
However, as we’ve said before elsewhere, often what is best is not necessarily what is attainable, so if you struggle to get the aforementioned sleep quantity and quality, then you might want to consider: How To Nap Like A Pro (No More “Sleep Hangovers”!)
There are more considerations, though, for example:
- How Regularity Of Sleep Can Be Even More Important Than Duration ← here’s why you should still get up at the same regular (and ideally, early) hour, even if you didn’t sleep well
- Early Bird Or Night Owl? Genes vs Environment ← and here’s why that regular hour should ideally be early, even if it’s not your genetic predisposition to be a “morning lark”; see also the study linked there that mentions “Gene distinguishes early birds from night owls and helps predict time of death”
One important thing to bear in mind: naps are not special
By this we mean: it might feel special to you at the time, taking a little slice of time for yourself, but scientifically speaking, it’s no more special than longer sleep, and in fact, it’s often less restorative, minute for minute, if you don’t time it perfectly.
The reason we mention this is because there is a sizeable (albeit revolving door) subculture of enthusiasts of polyphasic sleeping (i.e. sleeping more than once per day, by napping one or more times) with the goal of sleeping fewer hours in total by making sleep more efficient.
It does not work, except insofar as it can allow you to survive a crisis that is stopping you from sleeping properly. But this is sleep’s equivalent of “fight or flight”, it’s the body’s admittedly very impressive “emergency mode” that is not good to use on a daily basis!
(if you want to know just how bad it is… the top-listed “similar article” is entitled “Suicidal Ideation”)
For more on the woes of trying to force one’s body into polyphasic sleeping in order to sleep less in total, we covered this some years ago: Polyphasic Sleep… Super-Schedule Or An Idea Best Put To Rest?
One last thing: if you’re finding you need to nap a lot, then:
- You probably should indeed nap
- That is probably something you should get checked out, though
For example, researchers (Dr. Ruixue Cai et al.) tracked 1,338 older adults (aged 56+) for up to 19 years using wearable devices to objectively measure daytime napping patterns, and found that longer naps, more frequent naps, and naps taken in the morning were all linked to higher all-cause mortality in later life.
Specifically, each extra hour of daytime napping was associated with a 13% higher mortality risk, each additional daily nap with a 7% increase, and morning nappers had a 30% higher risk compared to afternoon nappers.
Now, these findings show correlation, not causation, meaning excessive napping likely reflects underlying issues such as neurodegeneration, cardiovascular disease, or circadian rhythm disruption, rather than being a case of the naps being the culprit causing death.
So to recap the main point of this last bit: if you’re finding you have to nap a lot, you should probably get that checked out, because while not itself dangerous so far as best current science can say, it may be a sign that “something wrong is not right”.
You can read this paper here: Objectively Measured Daytime Napping Patterns and All-Cause Mortality in Older Adults
Want to learn more?
This is the book on sleep:
Why We Sleep – by Dr. Matthew Walker
Enjoy!
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Jasmine McDonald’s Ballet Stretching Routine
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Why Jasmine’s Video is Useful
Jasmine McDonald is not only a professional ballerina, but is also a certified personal trainer, so when it comes to keeping her body strong and flexible, she’s a wealth of knowledge. Her video (below) is a great example of this.
In case you’re interested in learning more, she currently (privately) tutors over 30 people on a day-to-day basis. You can contact her here!
Other Stretches?
If you think that Jasmine’s stretches may be out of your league, we recommend checking out our other articles on stretching, including:
- 11 Minutes to Pain-Free Hips
- How to Permanently Loosen a Tight Psoas
- Stretching Scientifically
- Stretching & Mobility
- Stretching to Stay Young
Otherwise, let loose on these dancer stretches and exercises:
How did you find that 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!
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Yoga Teacher Tells What Yoga Won’t Do For You
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…and what to do instead in those cases:
Eliminating weaknesses
Yoga has some deficits, but they can be made up for in the four foundations of what Liv Townsend (the teacher whose video this is) uses in her “Yoga Rebel” method:
- Foundation 1: strengthen your target muscle in its shortened position, because weak muscles limit flexibility to protect joint stability (example: hamstring curls to shorten and strengthen hamstrings)
- Foundation 2: strengthen the opposite muscle pair (agonist/antagonist system), because contracting the partner allows your target muscle to release more (example: strengthen hip flexors to improve hamstring flexibility)
- Foundation 3: include passive stretching, since it reduces tightness, helps the nervous system tolerate discomfort, which is essential for stretching further, and thus lets you reach deeper ranges (example: yoga is actually good at this one and provides a lot of this; no need to add non-yoga exercises for this unless you want to)
- Foundation 4: strengthen your target muscle in its lengthened position (eccentric loading), which reduces the stretch reflex, builds resilience at end range, and lowers injury risk (example: Romanian deadlifts for hamstrings)
We realize a building does not normally have four foundations, and we might have called these “four pillars” or something instead, but it’s not our program and she didn’t consult us :p
It doesn’t take away from the usefulness of the advice, though, hence us sharing it here. For more on all of this plus visual demonstrations, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like:
Yoga Teacher: “If I wanted to get flexible [from scratch], here’s what I’d do”
Take care!
Don’t Forget…
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Learn to Age Gracefully
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