Soap vs Sanitizer – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing soap to sanitizer, we picked the soap.
Why?
Both are good at killing bacteria / inactivating viruses, but there are several things that set them apart:
- Soap doesn’t just kill them; it slides them off and away down the drain. That means that any it failed to kill are also off and down the drain, not still on your hands. This is assuming good handwashing technique, of course!
- Sanitizer gel kills them, but can take up to 4 minutes of contact to do so. Given that people find 20 seconds of handwashing laborious, 240 seconds of sanitizer gel use seems too much to hope for.
Both can be dehydrating for the hands; both can have ingredients added to try to mitigate that.
We recommend a good (separate) moisturizer in either case, but the point is, the dehydration factor doesn’t swing it far either way.
So, we’ll go with the one that gets rid of the germs the most quickly: the soap
10almonds tip: splash out on the extra-nice hand-soaps for your home—this will make you and others more likely to wash your hands more often! Sometimes, making something a more pleasant experience makes all the difference.
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Ozempic’s cousin drug liraglutide is about to get cheaper. But how does it stack up?
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Fourteen years ago, the older drug cousin of semaglutide (Ozempic and Wegovy) came onto the market. The drug, liraglutide, is sold under the brand names Victoza and Saxenda.
Patents for Victoza and Saxenda have now expried. So other drug companies are working to develop “generic” versions. These are likely be a fraction of current cost, which is around A$400 a month.
So how does liraglutide compare with semaglutide?
Halfpoint/Shutterstock How do these drugs work?
Liraglutide was not originally developed as a weight-loss treatment. Like semaglutide (Ozempic), it originally treated type 2 diabetes.
The class of drugs liraglutide and semaglutide belong to are known as GLP-1 mimetics, meaning they mimic the natural hormone GLP-1. This hormone is released from your small intestines in response to food and acts in several ways to improve the way your body handles glucose (sugar).
How do they stop hunger?
Liraglutide acts in several regions of the unconscious part of your brain, specifically the hypothalamus, which controls metabolism, and parts of the brain stem responsible for communicating your body’s nutrient status to the hypothalamus.
Its actions here appear to reduce hunger in two different ways. First, it helps you to feel full earlier, making smaller meals more satisfying. Second, it alters your “motivational salience” towards food, meaning it reduces the amount of food you seek out.
Liraglutide’s original formulation, designed to treat type 2 diabetes, was marketed as Victoza. Its ability to cause weight loss was evident soon after it entered the market.
Shortly after, a stronger formulation, called Saxenda, was released, which was intended for weight loss in people with obesity.
How much weight can you lose with liraglutide?
People respond differently and will lose different amounts of weight. But here, we’ll note the average weight loss users can expect. Some will lose more (sometimes much more), others will lose less, and a small proportion won’t respond.
The first GLP-1 mimicking drug was exenatide (Bayetta). It’s still available for treating type 2 diabetes, but there are currently no generics. Exenatide does provide some weight loss, but this is quite modest, typically around 3-5% of body weight.
For liraglutide, those using the drug to treat obesity will use the stronger one (Saxenda), which typically gives about 10% weight loss.
Semaglutide, with the stronger formulation called Wegovy, typically results in 15% weight loss.
The newest GLP-1 mimicking drug on the market, tirzepatide (Mounjaro for type 2 diabetes and Zepbound for weight loss), results in weight loss of around 25% of body weight.
What happens when you stop taking them?
Despite the effectiveness of these medications in helping with weight loss, they do not appear to change people’s weight set-point.
So in many cases, when people stop taking them, they experience a rebound toward their original weight.
People often regain weight when when they stop taking the drug. Mohammed_Al_Ali/Shutterstock What is the dose and how often do you need to take it?
Liraglutide (Victoza) for type 2 diabetes is exactly the same drug as Saxenda for weight loss, but Saxenda is a higher dose.
Although the target for each formulation is the same (the GLP-1 receptor), for glucose control in type 2 diabetes, liraglutide has to (mainly) reach the pancreas.
But to achieve weight loss, it has to reach parts of the brain. This means crossing the blood-brain barrier – and not all of it makes it, meaning more has to be taken.
All the current formulations of GLP-1 mimicking drug are injectables. This won’t change when liraglutide generics hit the market.
However, they differ in how frequently they need to be injected. Liraglutide is a once-daily injection, whereas semaglutide and tirzepatide are once-weekly. (That makes semaglutide and tirzepatide much more attractive, but we won’t see semaglutide as a generic until 2033.)
What are the side effects?
Because all these medicines have the same target in the body, they mostly have the same side effects.
The most common are a range of gastrointestinal upsets including nausea, vomiting, bloating, constipation and diarrhoea. These occur, in part, because these medications slow the movement of food out of the stomach, but are generally managed by increasing the dose slowly.
Recent clinical data suggests the slowing in emptying of the stomach can be problematic for some people, and may increase the risk of of food entering the lungs during operations, so it is important to let your doctor know if you are taking any of these drugs.
Because these are injectables, they can also lead to injection-site reactions.
Gastrointestinal side effects are most common. Halfpoint/Shutterstock During clinical trials, there were some reports of thyroid disease and pancreatitis (inflammation of the pancreas). However, it is not clear that these can be attributed to GLP-1 mimicking drugs.
In animals, GLP-1 mimicking drugs drugs have been found to negatively alter the growth of the embryo. There is currently no controlled clinical trial data on their use during pregnancy, but based on animal data, these medicines should not be used during pregnancy.
Who can use them?
The GLP-1 mimicking drugs for weight loss (Wegovy, Saxenda, Zepbound/Mounjaro) are approved for use by people with obesity and are meant to only be used in conjunction with diet and exercise.
These drugs must be prescribed by a doctor and for obesity are not covered by the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, which is one of the reasons why they are expensive. But in time, generic versions of liraglutide are likely to be more affordable.
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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Castor Oil: All-Purpose Life-Changer, Or Snake Oil?
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As “trending” health products go, castor oil is enjoying a lot of popularity presently, lauded as a life-changing miracle-worker, and social media is abuzz with advice to put it everywhere from your eyes to your vagina.
But:
- what things does science actually say it’s good for,
- what things lack evidence, and
- what things go into the category of “wow definitely do not do that”?
We don’t have the space to go into all of its proposed uses (there are simply far too many), but we’ll examine some common ones:
To heal/improve the skin barrier
Like most oils, it’s functional as a moisturizer. In particular, its high (90%!) ricinoleic fatty acid content does indeed make it good at that, and furthermore, has properties that can help reduce skin inflammation and promote wound healing:
Bioactive polymeric formulations for wound healing ← there isn’t a conveniently quotable summary we can just grab here, but you can see the data and results, from which we can conclude:
- formulations with ricinoleic acid (such as with castor oil) performed very well for topical anti-inflammatory purposes
- they avoided the unwanted side effects associated with some other contenders
- they consistently beat other preparations in the category of wound-healing
To support hair growth and scalp health
There is no evidence that it helps. We’d love to provide a citation for this, but it’s simply not there. There’s also no evidence that it doesn’t help. For whatever reason, despite its popularity, peer-reviewed science has simply not been done for this, or if it has, it wasn’t anywhere publicly accessible.
It’s possible that if a person is suffering hair loss specifically as a result of prostaglandin D2 levels, that ricinoleic acid will inhibit the PGD2, reversing the hair loss, but even this is hypothetical so far, as the science is currently only at the step before that:
However, due to some interesting chemistry, the combination of castor oil and warm water can result in acute (and irreversible) hair felting, in other words, the strands of hair suddenly glue together to become one mass which then has to be cut off:
“Castor Oil” – The Culprit of Acute Hair Felting
👆 this is a case study, which is generally considered a low standard of evidence (compared to high-quality Randomized Controlled Trials as the highest standard of evidence), but let’s just say, this writer (hi, it’s me) isn’t risking her butt-length hair on the off-chance, and doesn’t advise you to, either. There are other hair-oils out there; argan oil is great, coconut oil is totally fine too.
As a laxative
This time, there’s a lot of evidence, and it’s even approved for this purpose by the FDA, but it can be a bit too good, insofar as taking too much can result in diarrhea and uncomfortable cramping (the cramps are a feature not a bug; the mechanism of action is stimulatory, i.e. it gets the intestines squeezing, but again, it can result in doing that too much for comfort):
Castor Oil: FDA-Approved Indications
To soothe dry eyes
While putting oil in your eyes may seem dubious, this is another one where it actually works:
❝Castor oil is deemed safe and tolerable, with strong anti-microbial, anti-inflammatory, anti-nociceptive, analgesic, antioxidant, wound healing and vasoconstrictive properties.
These can supplement deficient physiological tear film lipids, enabling enhanced lipid spreading characteristics and reducing aqueous tear evaporation.
Studies reveal that castor oil applied topically to the ocular surface has a prolonged residence time, facilitating increased tear film lipid layer thickness, stability, improved ocular surface staining and symptoms.❞
Source: Therapeutic potential of castor oil in managing blepharitis, meibomian gland dysfunction and dry eye
Against candidiasis (thrush)
We couldn’t find science for (or against) castor oil’s use against vaginal candidiasis, but here’s a study that investigated its use against oral candidiasis:
…in which castor oil was the only preparation that didn’t work against the yeast.
Summary
We left a lot unsaid today (so many proposed uses, it feels like a shame to skip them), but in few words: it’s good for skin (including wound healing) and eyes; but we’d give it a miss for hair, candidiasis, and digestive disorders.
Want to try some?
We don’t sell it, but here for your convenience is an example product on Amazon 😎
Take care!
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Balanced Energy Cake Bars
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Unlike a lot of commercially available products, these bars won’t spike your blood sugars in the same way. There’s technically plenty of sugar in them, mostly from the chopped dates, but they’re also full of fiber, protein, and healthy fats. This means they can give you an energy boost (along with lots of gut-healthy, heart-healthy, and brain-healthy ingredients) without any crash later. They’re also delicious, and make for a great afternoon snack!
You will need
- 1 cup oats
- 15 Medjool dates, pitted and soaked in hot water for 15 minutes
- 3 carrots, grated
- 4oz almond butter
- 2 tbsp tahini
- 2 tbsp flaxseeds, milled
- 1 tbsp sesame seeds, toasted
- Optional: your choice of dried fruit and/or chopped nuts (mix it up; diversity is good!)
Method
(we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)
1) Steam the grated carrots for 3–4 minutes; pat dry and allow to cool
2) Drain and pat dry the dates, roughly chop them and add them to a bowl with the carrots. Because we chopped the dates rather than blended them (as many recipes do), they keep their fiber, which is important.
3) Add the oats, seeds, almond butter, and tahini. Also add in any additional dried fruit and/or chopped nuts you selected for the optional part. Mix well; the mixture should be quite firm. If it isn’t, add more oats.
4) Press the mixture into a 10″ square baking tin lined with baking paper. Refrigerate for a few hours, before cutting into bar shapes (or squares if you prefer). These can now be eaten immediately or stored for up to a week.
Enjoy!
Want to learn more?
For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:
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Small Changes For A Healthier Life
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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
I am interested in what I can substitute for ham in bean soup?
Well, that depends on what the ham was like! You can certainly buy ready-made vegan lardons (i.e. small bacon/ham bits, often in tiny cubes or similar) in any reasonably-sized supermarket. Being processed, they’re not amazing for the health, but are still an improvement on pork.
Alternatively, you can make your own seitan! Again, seitan is really not a health food, but again, it’s still relatively less bad than pork (unless you are allergic to gluten, in which case, definitely skip this one).
Alternatively alternatively, in a soup that already contains beans (so the protein element is already covered), you could just skip the ham as an added ingredient, and instead bring the extra flavor by means of a little salt, a little yeast extract (if you don’t like yeast extract, don’t worry, it won’t taste like it if you just use a teaspoon in a big pot, or half a teaspoon in a smaller pot), and a little smoked paprika. If you want to go healthier, you can swap out the salt for MSG, which enhances flavor in a similar fashion while containing less sodium.
Wondering about the health aspects of MSG? Check out our main feature on this, from last month:
I thoroughly enjoy your daily delivery. I’d love to see one for teens too!
That’s great to hear! The average age of our subscribers is generally rather older, but it’s good to know there’s an interest in topics for younger people. We’ll bear that in mind, and see what we can do to cater to that without alienating our older readers!
That said: it’s never too soon to be learning about stuff that affects us when we’re older—there are lifestyle factors at 20 that affect Alzheimer’s risk at 60, for example (e.g. drinking—excessive drinking at 20* is correlated to higher Alzheimer’s risk at 60).
*This one may be less of an issue for our US readers, since the US doesn’t have nearly as much of a culture of drinking under 21 as some places. Compare for example with general European practices of drinking moderately from the mid-teens, or the (happily, diminishing—but historically notable) British practice of drinking heavily from the mid-teens.
How much turmeric should I take each day?
Dr. Michael Greger’s research (of “Dr. Greger’s Daily Dozen” and “How Not To Die” fame) recommends getting at least ¼ tsp turmeric per day
Remember to take it with black pepper though, for a 2000% absorption bonus!
A great way to get it, if you don’t want to take capsules and don’t want to eat spicy food every day, is to throw a teaspoon of turmeric in when making a pot of (we recommend wholegrain!) rice. Turmeric is very water-soluble, so it’ll be transferred into the rice easily during cooking. It’ll make the rice a nice golden yellow color, and/but won’t noticeably change the taste.
Again remember to throw in some black pepper, and if you really want to boost the nutritional content,some chia seeds are a great addition too (they’ll get cooked with the rice and so it won’t be like eating seeds later, but the nutrients will be there in the rice dish).
You can do the same with par-boiled potatoes or other root vegetables, but because cooking those has water to be thrown away at the end (unlike rice), you’ll lose some turmeric in the water.
Request: more people need to be aware of suicidal tendencies and what they can do to ward them off
That’s certainly a very important topic! We’ll cover that properly in one of our Psychology Sunday editions. In the meantime, we’ll mention a previous special that we did, that was mostly about handling depression (in oneself or a loved one), and obviously there’s a degree of crossover:
The Mental Health First-Aid That You’ll Hopefully Never Need
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Fat’s Real Barriers To Health
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Fat Justice In Healthcare
This is Aubrey Gordon, an author, podcaster, and fat justice activist. What does that mean?
When it comes to healthcare, we previously covered some ideas very similar to her work, such as how…
There’s a lot of discrimination in healthcare settings
In this case, it often happens that a thin person goes in with a medical problem and gets treated for that, while a fat person can go in with the same medical problem and be told “you should try losing some weight”.
Top tip if this happens to you… Ask: “what would you advise/prescribe to a thin person with my same symptoms?”
Other things may be more systemic, for example:
When a thin person goes to get their blood pressure taken, and that goes smoothly, while a fat person goes to get their blood pressure taken, and there’s not a blood pressure cuff to fit them, is the problem the size of the person or the size of the cuff? It all depends on perspective, in a world built around thin people.
That’s a trivial-seeming example, but the same principle has far-reaching (and harmful) implications in healthcare in general, e.g:
- Surgeons being untrained (and/or unwilling) to operate on fat people
- Getting a one-size-fits-all dose that was calculated using average weight, and now doesn’t work
- MRI machines are famously claustrophobia-inducing for thin people; now try not fitting in it in the first place
…and so forth. So oftentimes, obesity will be correlated with a poor healthcare outcome, where the problem is not actually the obesity itself, but rather the system having been set up with thin people in mind.
It would be like saying “Having O- blood type results in higher risks when receiving blood transfusions”, while omitting to add “…because we didn’t stock O- blood”.
Read more on this topic: Shedding Some Obesity Myths
Does she have practical advice about this?
If she could have you understand one thing, it would be:
You deserve better.
Or if you are not fat: your fat friends deserve better.
How this becomes useful is: do not accept being treated as the problem!
Demand better!
If you meekly accept that you “just need to lose weight” and that thus you are the problem, you take away any responsibility from your healthcare provider(s) to actually do their jobs and provide healthcare.
See also Gordon’s book, which we’ve not reviewed yet but probably will one of these days:
“You Just Need to Lose Weight”: And 19 Other Myths About Fat People – by Aubrey Gordon
Are you saying fat people don’t need to lose weight?
That’s a little like asking “would you say office workers don’t need to exercise more?”; there are implicit assumptions built into the question that are going unaddressed.
Rather: some people might benefit healthwise from losing weight, some might not.
In fact, over the age of 65, being what is nominally considered “overweight” reduces all-cause mortality risk.
For details of that and more, see: When BMI Doesn’t Measure Up
But what if I do want/need to lose weight?
Gordon’s not interested in helping with that, but we at 10almonds are, so…
Check out: Lose Weight, But Healthily
Where can I find more from Aubrey Gordon?
You might enjoy her blog:
Aubrey Gordon | Your Fat Friend
Or her other book, which we reviewed previously:
What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat – by Aubrey Gordon
Enjoy!
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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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