Statins: His & Hers?

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The Hidden Complexities of Statins and Cardiovascular Disease (CVD)

This is Dr. Barbara Roberts. She’s a cardiologist and the Director of the Women’s Cardiac Center at one of the Brown University Medical School teaching hospitals. She’s an Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine and takes care of patients, teaches medical students, and does clinical research. She specializes in gender-specific aspects of heart disease, and in heart disease prevention.

We previously reviewed Dr. Barbara Roberts’ excellent book “The Truth About Statins: Risks and Alternatives to Cholesterol-Lowering Drugs”. It prompted some requests to do a main feature about Statins, so we’re doing it today. It’s under the auspices of “Expert Insights” as we’ll be drawing almost entirely from Dr. Roberts’ work.

So, what are the risks of statins?

According to Dr. Roberts, one of the biggest risks is not just drug side-effects or anything like that, but rather, what they simply won’t treat. This is because statins will lower LDL (bad) cholesterol levels, without necessarily treating the underlying cause.

Imagine you got Covid, and it’s one of the earlier strains that’s more likely deadly than “merely” debilitating.

You’re coughing and your throat feels like you gargled glass.

Your doctor gives you a miracle cough medicine that stops your coughing and makes your throat feel much better.

(Then a few weeks later, you die, because this did absolutely nothing for the underlying problem)

You see the problem?

Are there problematic side-effects too, though?

There can be. But of course, all drugs can have side effects! So that’s not necessarily news, but what’s relevant here is the kind of track these side-effects can lead one down.

For example, Dr. Roberts cites a case in which a woman’s LDL levels were high and she was prescribed simvastatin (Zocor), 20mg/day. Here’s what happened, in sequence:

  1. She started getting panic attacks. So, her doctor prescribed her sertraline (Zoloft) (a very common SSRI antidepressant) and when that didn’t fix it, paroxetine (Paxil). This didn’t work either… because the problem was not actually her mental health. The panic attacks got worse…
  2. Then, while exercising, she started noticing progressive arm and leg weakness. Her doctor finally took her off the simvastatin, and temporarily switched to ezetimibe (Zetia), a less powerful nonstatin drug that blocks cholesterol absorption, which change eased her arm and leg problem.
  3. As the Zetia was a stopgap measure, the doctor put her on atorvastatin (Lipitor). Now she got episodes of severe chest pressure, and a skyrocketing heart rate. She also got tremors and lost her body temperature regulation.
  4. So the doctor stopped the atorvastatin and tried rosovastatin (Crestor), on which she now suffered exhaustion (we’re not surprised, by this point) and muscle pains in her arms and chest.
  5. So the doctor stopped the rosovastatin and tried lovastatin (Mevacor), and now she had the same symptoms as before, plus light-headedness.
  6. So the doctor stopped the lovastatin and tried fluvastatin (Lescol). Same thing happened.
  7. So he stopped the fluvastatin and tried pravastatin (Pravachol), without improvement.
  8. So finally he took her off all these statins because the high LDL was less deleterious to her life than all these things.
  9. She did her own research, and went back to the doctor to ask for cholestyramine (Questran), which is a bile acid sequestrent and nothing to do with statins. She also asked for a long-acting niacin. In high doses, niacin (one of the B-vitamins) raises HDL (good) cholesterol, lowers LDL, and lowers tryglycerides.
  10. Her own non-statin self-prescription (with her doctor’s signature) worked, and she went back to her life, her work, and took up running.

Quite a treatment journey! Want to know more about the option that actually worked?

Read: Bile Acid Resins or Sequestrants

What are the gender differences you/she mentioned?

Actually mostly sex differences, since this appears to be hormonal (which means that if your hormones change, so will your risk). A lot of this is still pending more research—basically it’s a similar problem in heart disease to one we’ve previously talked about with regard to diabetes. Diabetes disproportionately affects black people, while diabetes research disproportionately focuses on white people.

In this case, most heart disease research has focused on men, with women often not merely going unresearched, but also often undiagnosed and untreated until it’s too late. And the treatments, if prescribed? Assumed to be the same as for men.

Dr. Roberts tells of how medicine is taught:

❝When I was in medical school, my professors took the “bikini approach” to women’s health: women’s health meant breasts and reproductive organs. Otherwise the prototypical patient was presented as a man.❞

There has been some research done with statins and women, though! Just, still not a lot. But we do know for example that some statins can be especially useful for treating women’s atherosclerosis—with a 50% success rate, rather than 31% for men.

For lowering LDL itself, however, it can work but is generally not so hot in women.

Fun fact:

In men:

  • High total cholesterol
  • High non-HDL cholesterol
  • High LDL cholesterol
  • Low HDL cholesterol

…are all significantly associated with an increased risk of death from CVD.

In women:

…levels of LDL cholesterol even more than 190 were associated with only a small, statistically insignificant increased risk of dying from CVD.

So…

The fact that women derive less benefit from a medicine that mainly lowers LDL cholesterol, may be because elevated LDL cholesterol is less harmful to women than it is to men.

And also: Treatment and Response to Statins: Gender-related Differences

And for that matter: Women Versus Men: Is There Equal Benefit and Safety from Statins?*

Definitely a case where Betteridge’s Law of Headlines applies!

What should women do to avoid dying of CVD, then?

First, quick reminder of our general disclaimer: we can’t give medical advice and nothing here comprises such. However… One particularly relevant thing we found illuminating in Dr. Roberts’ work was this observation:

The metabolic syndrome is diagnosed if you have three (or more) out of five of the following:

  1. Abdominal obesity (waist >35″ if a woman or >40″ if a man)
  2. Fasting blood sugars of 100mg/dl or more
  3. Fasting triglycerides of 150mg/dl or more
  4. Blood pressure of 130/85 or higher
  5. HDL <50 if a woman or <40 if a man

And yet… because these things can be addressed with exercise and a healthy diet, which neither pharmaceutical companies nor insurance companies have a particular stake in, there’s a lot of focus instead on LDL levels (since there are a flock of statins that can be sold be lower them)… Which, Dr. Roberts says, is not nearly as critical for women.

So women end up getting prescribed statins that cause panic attacks and all those things we mentioned earlier… To lower our LDL, which isn’t nearly as big a factor as the other things.

In summary:

Statins do have their place, especially for men. They can, however, mask underlying problems that need treatment—which becomes counterproductive.

When it comes to women, statins are—in broad terms—statistically not as good. They are a little more likely to be helpful specifically in cases of atherosclerosis, whereby they have a 50/50 chance of helping.

For women in particular, it may be worthwhile looking into alternative non-statin drugs, and, for everyone: diet and exercise.

Further reading: How Can I Safely Come Off Statins?

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  • Which B Vitamins? It Makes A Difference

    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.

    Everyone knows “B vitamins are for energy!” and that is definitely a theme, but there’s a lot more to it than that, and in some cases, there are big mistakes that people make when it comes to supplementing their diet.

    First, let’s do a quick overview of what each of the B vitamins do, by number, and putting names to them:

    B1 (Thiamine)

    • Function: helps convert carbohydrates into energy, supports nerve function
    • Forms: thiamine hydrochloride, thiamine mononitrate, benfotiamine (fat-soluble form)
    • Example foods: lentils, sunflower seeds

    B2 (Riboflavin)

    • Function: supports energy production, skin health, and eye function, turns your pee fluorescent yellow (the latter is really only if you consume exciting amounts of it; this will usually occur from supplementation, not from normal diet)
    • Forms: riboflavin, riboflavin-5’-phosphate
    • Example foods: almonds, mushrooms

    B3 (Niacin)

    • Function: aids metabolism, supports skin, nerves, and cholesterol levels
    • Forms: niacin (nicotinic acid), niacinamide (nicotinamide), inositol hexanicotinate (flush-free niacin)
    • Example foods: whole grains, peanuts (literally the best nut for this)

    B5 (Pantothenic Acid)

    • Function: essential for fatty acid metabolism and hormone production
    • Forms: pantothenic acid, calcium pantothenate, panthenol (alcohol form!)
    • Example foods: it’s in pretty much everything (hence the name); it’s almost impossible to be deficient in this vitamin unless you are literally starving

    B6 (Pyridoxine)

    • Function: needed for red blood cell production, supports brain function, as well as specifically being a part of neurotransmitter production (including dopamine and serotonin, despite them being made in different places—the brain and the gut, respectively),
    • Forms: pyridoxine hydrochloride, pyridoxal-5’-phosphate (active form)
    • Example foods: bananas, potatoes

    B7 (Biotin)

    • Function: helps with fatty acid synthesis, skin, hair, and nail health
    • Forms: d-biotin, biotinylated compounds of various kinds
    • Example foods: fava beans, walnuts

    B9 (Folate/Folic Acid)

    • Function: crucial for DNA synthesis, cell division, and fetal development
    • Forms: folic acid, folinic acid, 5-methyltetrahydrofolate (5-MTHF, active form)
    • Example foods: chickpeas, spinach ← we only mentioned one leafy green here for fairness, but leafy greens in general are great sources of vitamin B9, hence the name, from the Latin “folium”, meaning leaf.

    B12 (Cobalamin)

    • Function: supports red blood cell formation, nerve function, and DNA synthesis
    • Forms: cyanocobalamin, methylcobalamin (active), hydroxocobalamin (active), adenosylcobalamin (active)
    • Example foods: nutritional yeast, nori

    You may be wondering: what about vitamins B4, B8, B10, and B11? Those are now vacant spots, that once contained things that are no longer considered vitamins.

    Three Critical Vitamin B Mistakes That May Be Sabotaging Your Health

    Some mistakes that people make include:

    Not supplementing when necessary

    This occurs most often after midlife, especially in women, and the most common deficiencies are B1, B9, and B12.

    See also: These Signs Often Mean These Nutrient Deficiencies (Do You Have Any?)

    While it’s tempting to think “if I have a good balanced diet, I won’t need…” but the fact is sometimes our diet isn’t as nutrient dense as we hope—often through no fault of our own! But many modern farming methods prioritize yield over nutritional value, and that can result in plants and animals that do not have the nutritional qualities they “should”.

    We wrote about this a while back, weighing up the “supplementation vs diet alone” dilemma:

    Does Our Diet Need A Little Help? ← this also has a very useful chart of which vitamins people usually get too little or too much of. Note however that the statement of marginally excessive folate is slightly misleading, as the data pool contains men and women aged 18–65, while B9 is mostly needed more by women, and especially around childbirth or menopause, so B9 is actually a very common deficiency, but here it’s being balanced out lots of men getting too much (because every multivitamin has it).

    Supplementing to excess

    Most B vitamins have a very high maximum tolerable dose, because (with the exception of where we marked otherwise) they are water-soluble, which means that if you take more than you need, you’ll just pee it out later. Hence the famous fluorescence, for example.

    However, the fat soluble form of vitamin B1 is harder to get in and harder to get out.

    As for the others, problems usually only occur if you take enough to cause toxicity, faster than you pee it out. In other words, go easy on those Berocca drinks!

    Nevertheless, there are other problems that can arise:

    Vitamin B6 is essential—but too much can be toxic. Here’s what to know to stay safe ← tl;dr: there are issues with it causing peripheral neuropathy at doses over 10mg (the safe dose is disputed, so we’re mentioning the lowest safe dose here, but you can read about the others in the article)

    Getting forms that don’t work so well

    Those different forms we listed? They are not all created equal! For example:

    • Folic acid is cheap; unfortunately, it’s not absorbed or used well
    • Cyanocobalamin is cheap; unfortunately, it’s not absorbed or used well

    Let us quote a recent book review of ours:

    ❝Rather, the most common forms of vitamins B9 and B12 provided in supplements are folic acid and cyanocobalamin, respectively, which as he demonstrates with extensive research to back up his claims, cannot be easily absorbed or used especially well.

    About those vitamers: a vitamer is simply a form of a vitamin—most vitamins we need can arrive in a variety of forms. In the case of vitamins B9 and B12, he advocates for ditching vitamers folic acid and cyanocobalamin, cheap as they are, and springing for bioactive vitamers L-methylfolate, methylcobalamin, and adenosylcobalamin.

    He also discusses (again, just as well-evidenced as the above things) why we might struggle to get enough from our diet after a certain age. For example, if trying to get these vitamins from meat, 50% of people over 50 cannot manufacture enough stomach acid to break down that protein to release the vitamins.

    And as for methyl-B12 vitamers, you might expect you can get those from meat, and technically you can, but they don’t occur in all animals, just in one kind of animal. Specifically, the kind that has the largest brain-to-body ratio. However, eating the meat of this animal can result in protein folding errors in general and Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease in particular, so the author does not recommend eating humans, however nutritionally convenient that would be.

    All this means that supplementation after a certain age really can be a sensible way to do it—but do it wisely, and pick the right vitamers.❞

    You can read that review in full here: Your Vitamins are Obsolete: The Vitamer Revolution – by Dr. Sheldon Zablow

    Want to try those latter two?

    We don’t sell them, but here for your convenience are example products on Amazon:

    L-methylfolate (active form of vitamin B9)

    Methylcobalamin, adenosylcobalamin, & hydroxocobalamin (active forms of vitamin B12)

    Take care!

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  • Brain Food – by Dr. Lisa Mosconi

    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.

    We know that we should eat for brain health, but often that knowledge doesn’t go a lot further than “we should eat some nuts… but also not the wrong nuts, which would be bad”.

    However, as Dr. Lisa Mosconi lays out for us, there’s a lot more than that!

    This book is as much a treatise of brain health in the context of nutrition, as it is a “eat this and avoid that” guide.

    Which is good, because our brains don’t exist in isolation, and nor do the nutrients that we consume. Put it this way:

    We have a tendecy to think of our diets as a set of slider-bars, “ok, that’s 104% of my daily intake of fiber, I need another 10g protein and that’ll be at 100%, I’ve had 80% of the vitamin C that I need, and…”

    Whereas in reality: much of what we eat interacts positively or negatively with other things, and thus needs to be kept in balance. And not only that, but other peri-nutritional factors play a big part too! From obvious things like hydration, to less obvious things like maintaining good gut microbiota, our brains rely on us to do a lot of things for them.

    This book is very easy-reading, though a weakness is it doesn’t tend to summarise key ideas much, give cheat-sheets, that sort of thing. We recommend reading this book with a notebook to the side, to jot down things you want to attend to in your own dietary habits.

    Bottom line: this is an excellent overview of brain health in the context of nutrition, and is more comprehensive than most “eat this for good brain health and avoid that” books.

    Click here to check out “Brain Food” on Amazon and treat your brain like it deserves!

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  • 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!

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  • Cooking for Longevity – by Nisha Melvani

    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.

    Before it gets to the recipes, this book kicks off with a lot of science (much more than is usual for even healthy-eating recipe books), demystifying more nutrients than most people think of on a daily basis, what they do and where to get them, and even how to enhance nutrient absorption.

    As well as an up-front ingredients list, we additionally get not just meal planning advice in the usual sense of the word, but also advice on timing various aspects of nutrition in order to enjoy the best metabolic benefits.

    The recipes themselves are varied and good. It’s rare to find a recipe book that doesn’t include some redundant recipes, and this one’s no exception, but it’s better to have too much information than too little, so it’s perhaps no bad thing that all potentially necessary bases are covered.

    In terms of how well it delivers on the title’s promised “cooking for longevity” and the subtitle’s promised “boosting healthspan”, the science is good; very consistent with what we write here at 10almonds, and well-referenced too.

    Bottom line: if you’d like recipes to help you live longer and more healthily, then this book has exactly that.

    Click here to check out Cooking For Longevity, and cook for longevity!

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  • Superfood-Stuffed Squash

    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 stuffed squash recipe is packed with so many nutrient-dense ingredients, yet it feels delightfully decadent—a great recipe to have up your sleeve ready for fall.

    You will need

    • 1 large or two medium butternut squashes, halved lengthways and seeds removed (keep them; they are full of nutrients! You can sprout them, or dry them to use them at your leisure), along with some of the flesh from the central part above where the seeds are, so that there is room for stuffing
    • 2 cups low-sodium vegetable stock
    • 1 cup wild rice, rinsed
    • 1 medium onion, finely chopped
    • ½ cup walnuts, roughly chopped
    • ½ cup dried cranberries goji berries ← why goji berries? They have even more healthful properties than cranberries, and cranberries are hard to buy without so much added sugar that the ingredients list looks like “cranberries (51%), sugar (39%), vegetable oil (10%)”, whereas when buying goji berries, the ingredients list says “goji berries”, and they do the same culinary job.
    • ¼ cup pine nuts
    • ½ bulb garlic, minced
    • 1 tbsp dried thyme or 2 tsp fresh thyme, destalked
    • 1 tbsp dried rosemary or 2 tsp fresh rosemary, destalked
    • 1 generous handful fresh parsley, chopped
    • 1 tbsp chia seeds
    • 1 tbsp nutritional yeast
    • 1 tbsp black pepper, coarse ground
    • ½ tsp MSG or 1 tsp low-sodium salt
    • Extra virgin olive oil, for brushing and frying
    • Aged balsamic vinegar, to serve (failing this, make a balsamic vinegar reduction and use that; it should have a thicker texture but still taste acidic and not too sweet; the thickness should come from the higher concentration of grape must and its natural sugars; no need to add sugar)

    Method

    (we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)

    1) Preheat the oven to 400°F / 200°C.

    2) Brush the cut sides of the squash with olive oil; sprinkle with a pinch of MSG/salt and a little black pepper (grind it directly over the squash if you are using a grinder; hold the grinder high though so that it distributes evenly—waiters in restaurants aren’t just being dramatic when they do that with pepper or Parmesan or such)

    3) Arrange them cut-sides-down on a baking tray lined with baking paper, and roast for at least 30 minutes or until tender.

    4) While that is roasting, add the chia seeds to the wild rice, and cook them in the low-sodium vegetable stock, using a rice cooker if available. It should take about the same length of time, but if the rice is done first, set it aside, and if the squash is done first, turn the oven down low to keep it warm.

    5) Heat some oil in a sauté pan (not a skillet without high sides; we’re going to need space in a bit), and fry the chopped onion until translucent and soft. We could say “about 5 minutes” but honestly it depends on your pan as well as the heat and other factors.

    6) Add the seasonings (herbs, garlic, black pepper, MSG/salt, nooch), and cook for a further 2 minutes, stirring thoroughly to distribute evenly.

    7) Add the rice, berries, and nuts, cooking for a further 2 minutes, stirring constantly, ensuring everything is heated evenly.

    8) Remove the squash halves from the oven, turn them over, and spoon the mixture we just made into them, filling generously.

    9) Drizzle a lashing of the aged balsamic vinegar (or balsamic vinegar reduction), to serve.

    Enjoy!

    Want to learn more?

    For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:

    Take care!

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  • Can You Get Addicted To MSG, Like With Sugar?

    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.

    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 😎

    ❝Hello, I love your newsletter 🙂 Can I have a question? While browsing through your recepies, I realised many contained MSG. As someone based in Europe, I am not used to using MSG while cooking (of course I know that processed food bought in supermarket containes MSG). There is a stigma, that MSG is not particulary healthy, but rather it should be really bad and cause negative effects like headaches. Is this true? Also, can you get addicted to MSG, just like you get addicted to sugar? Thank you :)❞

    Thank you for the kind words, and the interesting questions!

    Short answer: no and no 🙂

    Longer answer: most of the negative reputation about MSG comes from a single piece of satire written in the US in the 1960s, which the popular press then misrepresented as a genuine concern, and the public then ran with, mostly due to racism/xenophobia/sinophobia specifically, given the US’s historically not fabulous relations with China, and the moniker of “Chinese restaurant syndrome”, notwithstanding that MSG was first isolated in Japan, not China, more than 100 years ago.

    The silver lining that comes out of this is that because of the above, MSG has been one of the most-studied food additives in recent decades, with many teams of scientists in many countries trying to determine its risks and not finding any (except insofar as anything in extreme quantities can kill you, including water or oxygen).

    You can read more about this and other* myths about MSG, here:

    Monosodium Glutamate: Sinless Flavor-Enhancer Or Terrible Health Risk?

    *such as pertaining to gluten sensitivity, which in reality MSG has no bearing on whatsoever as it does not contain gluten and is not even made of the same basic stuff; gluten being a protein made of (amongst other things) the amino acid glutamine, not a glutamate salt. Glutamate is as closely related to gluten as cyanocobalamin (vitamin B12) is to cyanide (the famous poison).

    PS: if you didn’t click the above link to read that article, then 1) we really do recommend it 2) we did some LD50 calculations there and looked at available research, and found that for someone of this writer’s (very medium) size, eating 1kg of MSG at once is sufficient to cause toxicity, and injecting >250g of MSG may cause heart problems. So we don’t recommend doing that.

    However, ½ tsp in a recipe that gives multiple portions is not going to get you anywhere close to the danger zone, unless you consume that entire meal by yourself hundreds of times per day. And if you do, the MSG is probably the least of your concerns.

    (2 tsp of cassia cinnamon, however, is enough to cause coumarin toxicity; for this reason we recommend Ceylon (or “True” or “Sweet”) cinnamon in our recipes, as it has almost undetectable levels of coumarin)

    With regard to your interesting question about addiction, first of all let’s speak briefly about sugar addiction:

    Sugar addiction is, by broad scientific consensus, agreed-upon as an extant thing that does exist, and contemporary research is more looking into the “hows” and “whys” and “whats” rather than the “whether”. It is a somewhat complicated topic, because it’s halfway between what science would usually consider a chemical addiction, and what science would usually consider a behavioral addiction:

    The Not-So-Sweet Science Of Sugar Addiction

    The reasonable prevailing hypothesis, therefore, is that sugar simply has two moderate mechanisms of addiction, rather than one strong one.

    The biochemical side of sugar addiction comes from the body’s metabolism of sugar, so this cannot be a thing for MSG, because there is nothing to metabolize in the same sense of the word (MSG being an inorganic compound with zero calories).

    People can crave salt, especially when deficient in it, and MSG does contain sodium (it’s what the “S” stands for), but it contains a little under ⅓ of the sodium that table salt does (sodium chloride in whatever form, be it sea salt, rock salt, or such):

    MSG vs. Salt: Sodium Comparison ← we do molecular calculations here!

    Sea Salt vs MSG – Which is Healthier? ← this one for a head-to-head

    However, even craving salt does not constitute an addiction; nobody is shamefully hiding their rock salt crystals under their bed and getting a fix when they feel low, and nor does withdrawal cause adverse side effects, except insofar as (once again) a person deficient in salt will crave salt.

    Finally, the only other way we know of that one might wonder if MSG could be addictive, is about glutamate and glutamate receptors. The glutamate in MSG is the same glutamate (down to the atoms) as the glutamate formed if one consumes tomatoes in the presence of salt, and triggers the same glutamate receptors in the same way. We have the same number of receptors either way, and uptake is exactly the same (because again, it’s exactly the same chemical) so there is a maximum to how strong this effect can be, and that maximum is the same whatever the source of the glutamate was.

    In this respect, if MSG is addictive, then so is a tomato salad with a pinch of salt: it’s not—it’s just tasty.

    We haven’t cited papers in today’s article, but it’s just because we cited them already in the articles we linked, and so we avoided doubling up. Most of them are in that first link we gave 🙂

    One final note

    Technically anyone can develop a sensitivity to anything, so in theory someone could develop a sensitivity to MSG, just like they could for any other ingredient. Our usual legal/medical disclaimer applies.

    However, it’s certainly not a common trigger, putting it well below common allergens like nuts (or less common allergens like, say, bananas), not even in the same league as common intolerances such as gluten, and less worthy of health risk warnings than, say, spinach (high in oxalates; fine for most people but best avoided if you have kidney problems).

    The reason we use it in the recipes we use it in, is simply because it’s a lower-sodium alternative to salt, and while it contains a (very) tiny bit less sodium than low-sodium salt (which itself has about ⅓ the sodium of regular salt), it has more of a flavor-enhancing effect, such that one can use half as much, for a more than sixfold total sodium reduction. Which for most of us in the industrialized world, is beneficial.

    Want to try some?

    If today’s article has inspired you to give MSG a try, here’s an example product on Amazon 😎

    Enjoy!

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