
Strawberries vs Raspberries – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing strawberries to raspberries, we picked the raspberries.
Why?
They’re both very respectable fruits, of course! But it’s not even close, and there is a clear winner here…
In terms of macros, the biggest difference is that raspberries have moderately more carbs, and more than 3x the fiber. Technically they also have 2x the protein, but that’s a case of “two times almost nothing is still almost nothing”. All in all, and especially for the “more than 3x the fiber” (6.5g/100g to strawberries’ 2g/100g), this one’s an easy win for raspberries.
When it comes to vitamins, strawberries have more vitamin C, while raspberries have more of vitamins A, B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, E, K, and choline. Another clear and easy win for raspberries.
In the category of minerals, guess what, raspberries win this hands-down, too: strawberries are higher in selenium, while raspberries have more calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, and zinc.
Adding up all the individual wins (all for raspberries), it’s not hard to say that raspberries win the day. Still, of course, enjoy either or both; diversity is good!
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
From Apples to Bees, and High-Fructose Cs: Which Sugars Are Healthier, And Which Are Just The Same?
Take care!
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Younger Next Year – by Chris Crowley & Dr. Henry Lodge
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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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Optimal Black Pepper Dosage and Supplement
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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 may have missed it, but how much black pepper provides benefits?❞
So, for any new subscribers joining us today, this is about two recent main features:
As for a daily dosage of black pepper, it varies depending on the benefit you’re looking for, but:
- 5–20mg of piperine is the dosage range used in most scientific studies we looked at
- 10mg is a very common dosage found in many popular supplements
- That’s the mass of piperine though, so if taking it as actual black pepper rather than as an extract, ½ teaspoon is considered sufficient to enjoy benefits.
❝I loved the health benefits of pepper. I do not like pepper. Where can I get it as a supplement?❞
You can simply buy whole black peppercorns and take a few with water as though they were tablets. Your stomach acid will do the rest. Black pepper is also good for digestion, so taking it with a meal is best.
You can buy piperine (black pepper extract) by itself as a supplement in powder form, but if you don’t like black pepper, you will probably not like this powder either. We couldn’t find it readily in capsule form.
You can buy piperine (black pepper extract) as an adjunct to other supplements, with perhaps the most common/popular being turmeric capsules that also contain 10mg (or more) piperine per capsule. Shop around if you like, but here’s one that has 15mg piperine* per capsule, for example.
*They call it “Bioperine®” but that is literally just piperine. Same go
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Undoing Creatine’s Puffiness Side Effect
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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!
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 😎
❝Creatine is known to increase “puffiness”, especially in my face. Are there any supplements that do the opposite?!❞
So first, let’s examine why this happens: creatine is most often taken to boost muscle size and performance. Your muscles are, of course, mostly water by mass, and so building your muscles requires extra water, which triggers systemic water retention.
In other words: you take creatine, exercise, and as the muscles start growing, the body goes “oh heck, we are running out of water, better save as much as possible in order to keep hydrating the muscles without running out” and starts putting it anywhere it can that’s not your bladder, so this will largely be the soft tissues of your body.
So, this results in classic water retentions symptoms including bloating and, yes, facial puffiness.
How much this happens, and how long the effects last, depend on three main things:
- What daily dose of creatine you are taking
- What kind of exercise you are doing
- What your hydration is like
The dose is relevant as it’s most common to get this puffiness during the “loading” phase, i.e. if you’re taking an increased dose to start with.
The exercise is relevant as it affects how much your body is actually using the water to build muscles.
The hydration is relevant because the less water you are taking, the more the body will try to retain whatever you do have.
This means, of course, that the supplement you are looking for to undo the facial puffiness is, in fact, water (even, nay, especially, if you feel bloated too):
Water For Everything? Water’s Counterintuitive Properties
Additionally, you could scale back the dose of creatine you’re taking, if you’re not currently doing heavy muscle-building exercise.
That said, the recommended dose for cognitive benefits is 5g/day, which is a very standard main-phase (i.e., post-loading) bodybuilding dose, so do with that information what you will.
See also: Creatine’s Brain Benefits Increase With Age
On which note: whether or not you want to take creatine for brain benefits, however, may depend on your age:
Creatine: Very Different For Young & Old People
Most research on creatine’s effects on humans has usually been either collegiate athletes or seniors, which leaves quite a research gap in the middle—so it’s unclear at what age the muscle-building effects begin to taper off, and at what age the cognitive benefits begin to take off.
Want a quicker fix?
If you want to reduce your facial puffiness acutely (e.g., you have a date in an hour and would like to not have a puffy face), then there are two things you can do that will help immediately, and/but only have short-term effects, meaning you’d have to do them daily to enjoy the results every day:
The first is an ice bath; simply fill a large bowl with water and ice cubes, give it a couple of minutes to get down to temperature, hold your breath and plunge your face in for as long as you can comfortably hold your breath. Repeat a few times, and towel off.
This helps by waking up the vasculature in your face, helping it to reduce puffiness naturally.
The second is facial yoga or guā shā, which is the practice of physically manipulating the soft tissues of your face to put them where you want them, rather than where you don’t want them. This will work against water retention puffiness, as well as cortisol puffiness, lymphatic puffiness, and more:
7-Minute Face Fitness For Lymphatic Drainage & Youthful Jawline
Enjoy!
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Self-Care That’s Not Just Self-Indulgence
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Self-Care That’s Not Just Self-Indulgence
Self-care is often seen as an excuse for self-indulgence. Worse, it’s often used as an excuse for self-indulgence—in ways that can end up making us feel worse.
It’s a bit like dietary “cheat days”. If your diet needs cheat days, your diet probably isn’t right for you!
How to recognize the difference between self-care and self-indulgence?
Statistically, the majority of our subscribers are parents (whose children are now mostly grown up, but still, the point is that parenting experience has been gleaned), and/or are or have been caregivers of some form or other.
When a small child is ill, we (hopefully!) look after them carefully:
- We don’t expect too much of them, but…
- …we do expect them to adhere to things consistent with their recovery.
Critically: an important part of self-care is that it actually should be care.
Let’s spell something out: neglect is not care!
How this works for physical and mental health
If you overdo it in physical exercise, it’s right and correct to take a break to recover, and during that time, do things that will hasten one’s recovery. For example:
Overdone It? How To Speed Up Recovery After Exercise
But it’s well-known that if you just do nothing, your condition will likely deteriorate. Also, “a break to recover” is going to be as short as is necessary to recover. Then you’ll ease back into exercise, but you will get back to it.
For mental health it’s just the same. If we for whatever reason need to take a step back, it’s right and correct to do take a break to recover, and during that time, do things that will hasten one’s recovery.
Sometimes, if for example it’s just a case of burnout, rest is the best medicine, and even rest can be an active process. See for example:
How To Rest More Efficiently (Yes, Really)
So the question to ask, when it comes to self-care vs self-indulgence, is:
“Is this activity helping me to get better?”
Some examples:
Probably not great self-care activities:
- Oversleeping (unless you were sleep-deprived, in which case, it’s better to get an earlier night than a later morning, if possible)
- Overeating (comfort-eating is a thing, but your actual problems will still be there)
- Mindless activities (mindless scrolling, TV-watching, game-playing, etc)
Probably better self-care activities:
- Enjoyable physical activity (whatever that may be for you)
- Preparing your favorite food, and then enjoying it mindfully
- Engaging in a personal project that might not be that important, but it’s fulfilling to you (hobbies etc can fall into this category)
- Scheduling some time, and committing some resources, to tackling whatever problem(s) you are facing that’s prompting you to need this self-care.
- Doing the tasks you want to hide away from, but making them fun.
What’s your go-to self-care? We love to hear from you, so feel free to hit “reply” to this email, or use the handy feedback form at the bottom!
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Black Cohosh vs The Menopause
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Black Cohosh, By Any Other Name…
Black cohosh is a flowering plant whose extracts are popularly used to relieve menopausal (and postmenopausal) symptoms.
Note on terms: we’ll use “black cohosh” in this article, but if you see the botanical names in studies, the reason it sometimes appears as Actaea racemosa and sometimes as Cimicfuga racemosa, is because it got changed and changed back on account of some disagreements between botanists. It’s the same plant, in any case!
Read: Reclassification of Actaea to include Cimicifuga and Souliea (Ranunculaceae)
Does it work?
In few words: it works for physical symptoms, but not emotional ones, based on this large (n=2,310) meta-analysis of studies:
❝Black cohosh extracts were associated with significant improvements in overall menopausal symptoms (Hedges’ g = 0.575, 95% CI = 0.283 to 0.867, P < 0.001), as well as in hot flashes (Hedges’ g = 0.315, 95% CIs = 0.107 to 0.524, P = 0.003), and somatic symptoms (Hedges’ g = 0.418, 95% CI = 0.165 to 0.670, P = 0.001), compared with placebo.
However, black cohosh did not significantly improve anxiety (Hedges’ g = 0.194, 95% CI = -0.296 to 0.684, P = 0.438) or depressive symptoms (Hedges’ g = 0.406, 95% CI = -0.121 to 0.932, P = 0.131)❞
~ Dr. Ryochi Sadahiro et al., 2023
Source: Black cohosh extracts in women with menopausal symptoms: an updated pairwise meta-analysis
Here’s an even larger (n=43,759) one that found similarly, and also noted on safety:
❝Treatment with iCR/iCR+HP was well tolerated with few minor adverse events, with a frequency comparable to placebo. The clinical data did not reveal any evidence of hepatotoxicity.
Hormone levels remained unchanged and estrogen-sensitive tissues (e.g. breast, endometrium) were unaffected by iCR treatment.
As benefits clearly outweigh risks, iCR/iCR+HP should be recommended as an evidence-based treatment option for natural climacteric symptoms.
With its good safety profile in general and at estrogen-sensitive organs, iCR as a non-hormonal herbal therapy can also be used in patients with hormone-dependent diseases who suffer from iatrogenic climacteric symptoms.❞
~ Dr. Castelo-Branco et al., 2020
(iCR = isopropanolic Cimicifuga racemosa)
So, is this estrogenic or not?
This is the question many scientists were asking, about 20 or so years ago. There are many papers from around 2000–2005, but here’s a good one that’s quite representative:
❝These new data dispute the estrogenic theory and demonstrate that extracts of black cohosh do not bind to the estrogen receptor in vitro, up-regulate estrogen-dependent genes, or stimulate the growth of estrogen-dependent tumors❞
Source: Is Black Cohosh Estrogenic?
(the abstract is a little vague, but if you click on the PDF icon, you can read the full paper, which is a lot clearer and more detailed)
The short answer: no, black cohosh is not estrogenic
Is it safe?
As ever, check with your doctor as everyone’s situation can vary, but broadly speaking, yes, it has a very good safety profile—including for breast cancer patients, at that. See for example:
- Black cohosh efficacy and safety for menopausal symptoms: the Spanish Menopause Society statement
- Black cohosh (Cimicifuga racemosa): safety and efficacy for cancer patients
- The safety of black cohosh (Actaea racemosa, Cimicifuga racemosa)
Where can I get some?
We don’t sell it, but here for your convenience is an example product on Amazon
Enjoy!
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Chickpeas vs Mung Beans – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing chickpeas to mung beans, we picked the chickpeas.
Why?
Both are great! But there’s a clear winner here:
In terms of macros, chickpeas have more protein, carbs, and fiber, as well as the lower glycemic index. The difference is very small, but it’s a nominal win for chickpeas.
When it comes to vitamins, chickpeas have more of vitamins A, B2, B6, B9, C, E, K, and choline, while mung beans have more of vitamins B1, B3, and B5. Again the differences aren’t huge, but by strength of numbers they’re in chickpeas’ favor, so it’s another win for chickpeas here.
In the category of minerals, chickpeas have more calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, and zinc, while mung beans are not higher in any mineral. An easy win for chickpeas on this one.
Adding up the sections makes for a clear overall win for chickpeas, but by all means enjoy either or both; diversity is good!
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
Plant vs Animal Protein: Head to Head
Enjoy!
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