Spermidine For Longevity

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The 10almonds Team

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!

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 😎

❝How much evidence is there behind the longevity-related benefit related to spermidine, and more specifically, does it cause autophagy?❞

A short and simple answer to the latter question: yes, it does:

Spermidine: a physiological autophagy inducer acting as an anti-aging vitamin in humans?

For anyone wondering what autophagy is: it’s when old cells are broken down and consumed by the body to make new ones. Doing this earlier rather than later means that the genetic material is not yet so degraded when it is copied, and so the resultant new cell(s) will be “younger” than if the previous cell(s) had been broken down and recycled when older.

Indeed, we have written previously about senolytic supplements such as fisetin, which specialize in killing senescent (aging) cells earlier:

Fisetin: The Anti-Aging Assassin

As for spermidine and longevity, because of its autophagy-inducing properties, it’s considered a caloric restriction mimetic, that is to say, it has the same effect on a cellular level as caloric restriction. And yes, while it’s not an approach we regularly recommend here (usually preferring intermittent fasting as a CR-mimetic), caloric restriction is a way to fight aging:

Is Cutting Calories The Key To Healthy Long Life?

As for how spermidine achieves similarly:

Spermidine delays aging in humans

However! Both of the scientific papers on spermidine use in humans that we’ve cited so far today have conflict of interests statements made with regard to the funding of the studies, which means there could be some publication bias.

To that end, let’s look at a less glamorous study (e.g. no “in humans” in the title because, like most longevity studies, it’s with non-human animals with naturally short lifespans such as mice and rats), like this one that finds it to be both cardioprotective and neuroprotective and having many anti-aging benefits mediated by inducing autophagy:

A review on polyamines as promising next-generation neuroprotective and anti-aging therapy

(the polyamines in question are spermidine and putrescine, which latter is a similar polyamine)

Lastly, let’s answer a few likely related questions, so that you don’t have to Google them:

Does spermidine come from sperm?

Amongst other places (including some foods, which we’ll come to in a moment), yes, spermidine is normally found in semen (in fact, it’s partly responsible for the normal smell, though other factors influence the overall scent, such as diet, hormones, and other lifestyle factors such as smoking, alcohol use etc) and that is how/where it was first identified.

Does that mean that consuming semen is good for longevity?

Aside from the health benefits of a healthy sex life… No, not really. Semen does contain spermidine (as discussed) as well as some important minerals, but you’d need to consume approximately 1 cup of semen to get the equivalent spermidine you’d get from 1 tbsp of edamame (young soy) beans.

Unless your lifestyle is rather more exciting than this writer’s, it’s a lot easier to get 1 tbsp of edamame beans than 1 cup of semen.

Here are how some top foods stack up, by the way—we admittedly cherry-picked from the near top of the list, but wheatgerm is an even better source, with cheddar cheese and mushrooms (it was shiitake in the study) coming after soy:

Frontiers in Nutrition | Polyamines in Food

Alternatively, if you prefer to just take it in supplement form, here’s an example product on Amazon, giving 5mg per capsule (which is almost as much as the 1 cup of semen or 1 tbsp of edamame that we mentioned earlier).

Enjoy!

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  • Fennel vs Artichoke – Which is Healthier?

    The 10almonds Team

    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 fennel to artichoke, we picked the artichoke.

    Why?

    Both are great! But artichoke wins on nutritional density.

    In terms of macros, artichoke has more protein and more fiber, for only slightly more carbs.

    Vitamins are another win for artichoke, boasting more of vitamins B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, B9, and choline. Meanwhile, fennel has more of vitamins A, E, and K, which is also very respectable but does allow artichoke a 6:3 lead.

    In the category of minerals, artichoke has a lot more copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, and phosphorus, while fennel has a little more calcium, potassium, and selenium.

    One other relevant factor is that fennel is a moderate appetite suppressant, which may be good or bad depending on your food-related goals.

    All in all though, we say the artichoke wins by virtue of its greater abundance of nutrients!

    Want to learn more?

    You might like to read:

    What Matters Most For Your Heart? ← appropriately enough, with fennel hearts and artichoke hearts!

    Take care!

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  • The Brain-Gut Highway: A Two-Way Street

    The 10almonds Team

    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.

    The Brain-Gut Two-Way Highway

    This is Dr. Emeran Mayer. He has the rather niche dual specialty of being a gastroenterologist and a neurologist. He has published over 353 peer reviewed scientific articles, and he’s a professor in the Departments of Medicine, Physiology, and Psychiatry at UCLA. Much of his work has been pioneering medical research into gut-brain interactions.

    We know the brain and gut are connected. What else does he want us to know?

    First, that it is a two-way interaction. It’s about 90% “gut tells the brain things”, but it’s also 10% “brain tells the gut things”, and that 10% can make more like a 20% difference, if for example we look at the swing between “brain using that 10% communication to tell gut to do things worse” or “brain using that 10% communication to tell gut to do things better”, vs the midpoint null hypothesis of “what the gut would be doing with no direction from the brain”.

    For example, if we are experiencing unmanaged chronic stress, that is going to tell our gut to do things that had an evolutionary advantage 20,000–200,000 years ago. Those things will not help us now. We do not need cortisol highs and adrenal dumping because we ate a piece of bread while stressed.

    Read more (by Dr. Mayer): The Stress That Evolution Has Not Prepared Us For

    With this in mind, if we want to look after our gut, then we can start before we even put anything in our mouths. Dr. Mayer recommends managing stress, anxiety, and depression from the head downwards as well as from the gut upwards.

    Here’s what we at 10almonds have written previously on how to manage those things:

    Do eat for gut health! Yes, even if…

    Unsurprisingly, Dr. Mayer advocates for a gut-friendly, anti-inflammatory diet. We’ve written about these things before:

    …but there’s just one problem:

    For some people, such as with IBS, Crohn’s, and colitis, the Mediterranean diet that we (10almonds and Dr. Mayer) generally advocate for, is inaccessible. If you (if you have those conditions) eat as we describe, a combination of the fiber in many vegetables and the FODMAPs* in many fruits, will give you a very bad time indeed.

    *Fermentable Oligo-, Di-, Monosaccharides And Polyols

    Dr. Mayer has the answer to this riddle, and he’s not just guessing; he and his team did science to it. In a study with hundreds of participants, he measured what happened with adherence (or not) to the Mediterranean diet (or modified Mediterranean diet) (or not), in participants with IBS (or not).

    The results and conclusions from that study included:

    ❝Among IBS participants, a higher consumption of fruits, vegetables, sugar, and butter was associated with a greater severity of IBS symptoms. Multivariate analysis identified several Mediterranean Diet foods to be associated with increased IBS symptoms.

    A higher adherence to symptom-modified Mediterranean Diet was associated with a lower abundance of potentially harmful Faecalitalea, Streptococcus, and Intestinibacter, and higher abundance of potentially beneficial Holdemanella from the Firmicutes phylum.

    A standard Mediterranean Diet was not associated with IBS symptom severity, although certain Mediterranean Diet foods were associated with increased IBS symptoms. Our study suggests that standard Mediterranean Diet may not be suitable for all patients with IBS and likely needs to be personalized in those with increased symptoms.❞

    In graphical form:

    And if you’d like to read more about this (along with more details on which specific foods to include or exclude to get these results), you can do so…

    Want to know more?

    Dr. Mayer offers many resources, including a blog, books, recipes, podcasts, and even a YouTube channel:

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  • How To Rest More Efficiently (Yes, Really)

    The 10almonds Team

    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.

    How To Rest More Efficiently (Yes, Really)

    We’ve talked before about how to recover more quickly after a workout, especially if you overdid it. There are a lot of tips in that article, so by all means check it out if you didn’t catch it at the time!

    That was very specific to recovering from exercise, though. Today we’re looking at something a little different, a little more holistic.

    You’re busier than you think

    Maybe your life is an obvious blur of busy-ness. Maybe it’s not. But either way, you’re almost certainly busier than you think. Especially on a cellular level.

    Your resting metabolic rate (RMR), or how many calories you burn while at rest (i.e., calories used just to keep you alive) will depend on various factors including age, sex, weight, body composition, and other things.

    That said, it’ll probably be between 1000 and 2000 calories per day. You can get a rough idea of what it might be for you, using this calculator:

    How Many Calories Do You Burn a Day at Rest (Doing Nothing)?

    So if ever you wonder why you feel so exhausted, despite having done nothing, it could be that your body was busy:

    • Metabolizing, generally (did you have a big meal?)
    • Fighting an illness (bacterial or viral infection, for example)
    • Fighting an imaginary illness and creating a real one in the process (stress, inflammation, etc)
    • Recovering/rebuilding from something you did yesterday or even before that
    • Thinking (your brain is your largest organ by mass, and consumes the most calories by far)

    Your brain does not get a free pass on being part of your body! Just like if a certain muscle group were working out constantly for 16 hours you’d be feeling pretty tired, the same goes for the organ that is your brain, if it’s been working out constantly.

    Your body is a composite organism—take advantage of that

    Dolphins can shut down half of their brain at once, to let each hemisphere of the brain sleep independently in shifts. We (except in the case of split brain patients, where the corpus callosum has been severed) can’t do that, but we can let different parts of the organism that is our body work in shifts.

    This is the real meaning of “a change is as a good as a rest”:

    If you’ve been doing cognitive work (at your desk perhaps, maybe managing a spreadsheet, say), then taking a break to do crosswords will not, actually, give you break. Because you’re still sitting manipulating letters and numbers. As far as your brain (still having to do work!) is concerned, it’s basically the same. Nor will checking out social media; you’re still sitting examining a screen.

    Instead, time to get physically active. Literally just doing the washing up would be a better break! Some yoga or Pilates would be perfect.

    In contrast, if you’ve been doing a vigorous bit of gardening, then for example taking a break to lift weights isn’t going to be a break, because again you just switched to a similar task.

    Better to pick up that book you’ve been meaning to read, or the crosswords we mentioned earlier. Or just lounge in your nicely-gardened garden.

    The important thing is: to not require the same resources from the body (including the brain, it’s still part of the body) that you have been.

    For more specific tips than we have room for here today, check out:

    How to Take Better Breaks at Work, According to Research

    Give your metabolism a break too

    Not completely—you don’t need to be put into cryostasis or anything.

    But, give your metabolism a rest, in relative terms. Intermittent fasting is great for precisely this; it lets your body rest and reset.

    See: Intermittent Fasting: we sort the science from the hype!

    So does the practice of meditation, by the way. You don’t have to get fancy with it, either:

    Check out: No Frills, Evidence-Based Mindfulness

    Enjoy, and rest well!

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  • Does Ginseng Increase Testosterone Levels?

    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.

    The 10almonds Team

    ❓ Q&A With 10almonds Subscribers!

    Q: You talked about spearmint as reducing testosterone levels, what about ginseng for increasing them?

    A: Hormones are complicated and often it’s not a simple matter of higher or lower levels! It can also be a matter of…

    • how your body converts one thing into another
    • how your body responds (or not) to something according to how the relevant hormone’s receptors are doing
    • …and whether there’s anything else blocking those receptors.

    All this to say: spearmint categorically is an anti-androgen, but the mechanism of action remains uncertain.

    Panax ginseng, meanwhile, is one of the most well-established mysteries in herbal medicine.

    Paradoxically, it seems to improve both male and female hormonal regulation, despite being more commonly associated with the former.

    But it also…

    Bottom line: Panax ginseng is popularly taken to improve natural hormone function, a task at which it appears to excel.

    Scientists are still working out exactly how it does the many things it appears to do.

    Progress has been made, and it clearly is science rather than witchcraft, but there are still far more unanswered questions than resolved ones!

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  • A Correction, And A New, Natural Way To Boost Daily Energy Levels

    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.

    The 10almonds Team

    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

    First: a correction and expansion!

    After yesterday’s issue of 10almonds covering breast cancer risks and checks, a subscriber wrote to say, with regard to our opening statement, which was:

    “Anyone (who has not had a double mastectomy, anyway) can get breast cancer”

    ❝I have been enjoying your newsletter. This statement is misleading and should have a disclaimer that says even someone who has had a double mastectomy can get breast cancer, again. It is true and nothing…nothing is 100% including a mastectomy. I am a 12 year “thriver” (I don’t like to use the term survivor) who has had a double mastectomy. I work with a local hospital to help newly diagnosed patients deal with their cancer diagnosis and the many decisions that follow. A double mastectomy can help keep recurrence from happening but there are no guarantees. I tried to just delete this and let it go but it doesn’t feel right. Thank you!❞

    Thank you for writing in about this! We wouldn’t want to mislead, and we’re always glad to hear from people who have been living with conditions for a long time, as (assuming they are a person inclined to learning) they will generally know topics far more deeply than someone who has researched it for a short period of time.

    Regards a double mastectomy (we’re sure you know this already, but noting here for greater awareness, prompted by your message), a lot of circumstances can vary. For example, how far did a given cancer spread, and especially, did it spread to the lymph nodes at the armpits? And what tissue was (and wasn’t) removed?

    Sometimes a bilateral prophylactic mastectomy will leave the lymph nodes partially or entirely intact, and a cancer could indeed come back, if not every last cancerous cell was removed.

    A total double mastectomy, by definition, should have removed all tissue that could qualify as breast tissue for a breast cancer, including those lymph nodes. However, if the cancer spread unnoticed somewhere else in the body, then again, you’re quite correct, it could come back.

    Some people have a double mastectomy without having got cancer first. Either because of a fear of cancer due to a genetic risk (like Angelina Jolie), or for other reasons (like Elliot Page).

    This makes a difference, because doing it for reasons of cancer risk may mean surgeons remove the lymph nodes too, while if that wasn’t a factor, surgeons will tend to leave them in place.

    In principle, if there is no breast tissue, including lymph nodes, and there was no cancer to spread, then it can be argued that the risk of breast cancer should now be the same “zero” as the risk of getting prostate cancer when one does not have a prostate.

    But… Surgeries are not perfect, and everyone’s anatomy and physiology can differ enough from “textbook standard” that surprises can happen, and there’s almost always a non-zero chance of certain health outcomes.

    For any unfamiliar, here’s a good starting point for learning about the many types of mastectomy, that we didn’t go into in yesterday’s edition. It’s from the UK’s National Health Service:

    NHS: Mastectomy | Types of Mastectomy

    And for the more sciency-inclined, here’s a paper about the recurrence rate of cancer after a prophylactic double mastectomy, after a young cancer was found in one breast.

    The short version is that the measured incidence rate of breast cancer after prophylactic bilateral mastectomy was zero, but the discussion (including notes about the limitations of the study) is well worth reading:

    Breast Cancer after Prophylactic Bilateral Mastectomy in Women with a BRCA1 or BRCA2 Mutation

    ❝[Can you write about] the availability of geriatric doctors Sometimes I feel my primary isn’t really up on my 70 year old health issues. I would love to find a doctor that understands my issues and is able to explain them to me. Ie; my worsening arthritis in regards to food I eat; in regards to meds vs homeopathic solutions.! Thanks!❞

    That’s a great topic, worthy of a main feature! Because in many cases, it’s not just about specialization of skills, but also about empathy, and the gap between studying a condition and living with a condition.

    About arthritis, we’re going to do a main feature specifically on that quite soon, but meanwhile, you might like our previous article:

    Keep Inflammation At Bay (arthritis being an inflammatory condition)

    As for homeopathy, your question prompts our poll today!

    (and then we’ll write about that tomorrow)

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  • Eat to Beat Your Diet – by Dr. William Li

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    The 10almonds Team

    We previously reviewed Dr. Li’s excellent “Eat To Beat Disease”, so you may be wondering how much overlap there is. While he does still cover such topics as angiogenesis, organ regeneration, microbiome health, DNA protection, and immunological considerations, and much of the dietary advice is similar, most of the explanation is different.

    Because, this time, rather than looking at beating disease in general, there’s a much stronger focus on metabolic disease in particular, and yes, for those who want to do so, losing fat.

    The scientific explanations are in-depth, such that you come way with not merely “I should eat an avocado once in a while”, but a comprehensive understanding of the body’s metabolic processes, from the chemistry to the organs involved, from the cellular to the systemic.

    The style is on the hard end of pop-science. It’s approachably readable, while having a lot of densely-packed information with minimal fluff. You will be more than getting your money’s worth out of its 496 pages.

    Bottom line: if you’d like to perk up your metabolism with a dietary approach that’s enjoyable and very restrictive, then this book will arm you with the knowledge to do that.

    Click here to check out Eat To Beat Your Diet, and eat to beat your diet!

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