Tempeh vs Tofu – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing tempeh to tofu, we picked the tempeh.
Why?
Per 100g, tempeh has about 1.5x as many calories, about 2x as much protein, about 3x as much fiber, and about 4x the carbohydrates.
Which latter sounds like a lot, but really, the amounts here are small—tempeh is under 12% carbohydrates, and most of that is treated by the body as fiber (e.g. it’s a resistant starch).
Both have no sugar, and both have more or less the same (tiny) amount of fat.
Micronutrients, you ask? As they’re both made from soybeans, the micronutrient profiles are similar, but exact amounts will depend on the method used, so by all means check labels if comparing products in store. By and large, there’s usually not much difference, though.
You can see sample stats here:
In summary
Both are great, and/but tempeh is the more nutrient-dense of the two.
Therefore, tempeh is the healthier option, unless you are on a very strictly calorie-controlled diet, in which case, tofu will give you more quantity per calorie.
Enjoy!
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Vaginal Probiotics: What Does The Science Say?
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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 😎
❝Is there any merit to vaginal probiotics?❞
What a fun question! First let’s break it down, as this could mean two different things:
- Probiotics, which you consume, using your mouth, which are marketed as benefiting vaginal health
- Probiotics taken as a vaginal pessary/suppository, to act directly there
The former has limited evidence for it, but generally speaking, improving one’s gut health improves all other areas of health, so it’s not surprising if it helps this too.
See for example:
Some notes:
- candidal vaginitis means a yeast infection causing vaginal inflammation
- bacterial vaginosis means a vaginal bacterial imbalance (generally also featuring vaginal inflammation, though it can be asymptomatic)
In the latter case, the “imbalance” in question is usually a shortage of Lactobacillus sp. (that is to say, the diverse species of the Lactobacillus genus) resulting in an overgrowth of other kinds of bacteria, which in turn results in changing the vaginal microbiome to make it warmer and more acidic than it should be.
While a healthy vagina shouldn’t smell of roses, it shouldn’t smell fishy either; if it does, that’s a sign of bacterial vaginosis.
What it’s supposed to be like: slightly bitter, slightly salty, distinctly umami, along with a cocktail of personal pheromones (and if menstruating or otherwise* vaginally bleeding, then of course add: iron/”metallic”). The pheromones will also reflect any hormonal changes, but should never make anything smell bad, just different.
*e.g. due to PCOS, fibroids, etc. Note that in the case of PCOS, it may also smell a little different (if it does, then usually: a little more musky), due to often different hormone levels. Again: it still shouldn’t smell bad, though, just different.
In the above-linked study, taking more live Lactobacillus acidophilus (in yogurt, eating it, with their mouths) improved levels of L. acidophilus in the vagina. While the study authors concluded “this ingestion of yogurt may have reduced episodes of bacterial vaginosis”, which is rather a weak claim, it can be argued that it merely improving the levels of L. acidophilus in the vagina was already a win.
That was a small (n=42, and only 7 followed through to completion) and old (1996) study, and it bears mentioning that most of the studies into this seem to be small and old, but conclude similarly with weakly positive statements.
However, it does make a difference what kind of Lactobacillus is used, for example in this next study…
- L. fermentum RC-14 worked well (90% success rate)
- L. rhamnosus GR-1 worked somewhat (40% success rate)
- L. rhamnosus GG did not work (0% success rate)
So, diversity is key, and getting a wide range of Lactobacillus sp. seems to be a safe bet.
Short version: enjoying probiotics as part of your diet probably improves vaginal health, just like it improves pretty much everything else.
See also: Make Friends With Your Gut (You Can Thank Us Later)
You would think that this would mean that taking probiotics as a vaginal pessary/suppository would be even better, but the results are weaker, as in this study, which produced temporary improvements in about half the study group, with only 3 out of 28 being free of bacterial vaginosis the next month:
Treatment of bacterial vaginosis with lactobacilli
This study got better results, with a 61% success rate:
Important note
Do note that this last category, involving topical treatments (i.e., manually introducing Lactobacillus sp. to the vagina) were all in cases of pre-existing bacterial vaginosis, not as a prophylactic and/or general health-improving thing.
If your vagina seems happy right now, then do not mess with its happy bacterial balance!
And at all times (regardless of whether it seems happy right now or not): do not douche (it does not need it and will not benefit from it; the vagina is self-cleaning*) as this will wash out many of your Lactobacilli and will do absolutely nothing against any Candida there (C. albicans being a rooted fungus, whereas Lactobacillus is a sausage-shaped bacterium with many tiny appendages but no actual ability to stay put), so Candida will flourish in the Lactobacillus’s absence.
*by the vagina, we are referring to the vaginal canal. The vulva—the outside part consisting of the two pairs of labia, the glans clitoris, and clitoral hood—are not self-cleaning, and should just be washed gently per your normal bath/shower routine; that’s perfectly fine and good.
And definitely don’t put any “cleansing” toiletries inside the vagina (or any toiletries at all, for that matter), even if they are sold and marketed for that purpose; they will not help and they will harm.
Also, due to their neighborliness, messing up the microbiome inside the vagina is a common way to also get Candida inside the urethra:
How To Avoid Urinary Tract Infections (UTIs)
One other option
Finally, unless you have a “very good friend” you have a pressing urge to swap germs with, you might want to leave this one to the scientists, but we share this paper just for interest:
Lastly…
Going back to oral supplementation, if you’d like to try that then check out this for further notes on what, why, how, etc:
How Much Difference Do Probiotic Supplements Make To Health?
Take care!
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The Sun Exposure Dilemma
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The Sun Exposure Dilemma
Yesterday, we asked you about your policy on sun exposure, and got the above-pictured, below-described, set of answers:
- A little over a third of respondents chose “I recognize the risks, but I think the benefits outweigh them”
- A quarter of respondents chose “I am a creature of the shadows and I avoid the sun at all costs”
- A little over a fifth of respondents chose “I recognize the benefits, but I think the risks outweigh them”
- A little under a fifth of respondents chose “I’m a sun-lover! Give me that vitamin D and other benefits!”
All in all, this is perhaps the most even spread of answers we’ve had for Friday mythbuster polls—though the sample size was smaller than it often is.
Of those who added comments, common themes were to mention your local climate, and the importance of sunscreen and/or taking vitamin D supplements.
One subscriber mentioned having lupus and living in Florida, which is a particularly unfortunate combination:
Lupus Foundation | Lupus & UV exposure: What you need to know
Another subscriber wrote:
❝Use a very good sunscreen with a high SPF all the time. Reapply after swimming or as needed! I also wear polarized sunglasses anytime I’m outside.❞
…which are important things to note too, and a lot of people forget!
See also: Who Screens The Sunscreens? (on fearing chemical dangers, vs the protection given)
But, onto today’s science for the topic at hand…
We need to get plenty of sun to get plenty of vitamin D: True or False?
True or False, depending on so many factors—to the point that many people get it wildly wrong in either direction.
Whether we are getting enough vitamin D depends on many circumstances, including:
- The climate (and depending on latitude, time of year) where we live
- Our genes, and especially (but not only) our skintone
- The clothes we wear (or don’t)
- Our diet (and not just “how much vitamin D do we consume”)
- Chronic diseases that affect vitamin D metabolism and/or requirements and/or sensitivity to the sun
For a rundown on these factors and more, check out:
Should I be getting my vitamin D levels checked?
Notably, on the topic of whether you should stay in the sun for longer to get more vitamin D…
❝The body can only produce a certain amount of vitamin D at the time, so staying in the sun any longer than needed (which could be just a few minutes, in a sunny climate) is not going to help increase your vitamin D levels, while it will increase your risk of skin cancer.❞
In contrast, she does also note:
❝During winter, catching enough sun can be difficult, especially if you spend your days confined indoors. Typically, the required exposure increases to two to three hours per week in winter. This is because sunlight exposure can only help produce vitamin D if the UVB rays reach us at the correct angle. So in winter we should regularly spend time outside in the middle of the day to get our dose of vitamin D.❞
See also: Vitamin D & Calcium: Too Much Of A Good Thing?
We can skip the sun and get our vitamin D from diet/supplements: True or False?
True! However, vitamin D is not the only health benefit of sun exposure.
Not only is sunlight-induced serotonin production important for many things ranging from mood to circadian rhythm (which in turn affects many other aspects of health), but also…
While too much sun can cause skin cancer, too little sun could cause other kinds of cancer:
Benefits of Sunlight: A Bright Spot for Human Health
Additionally, according to new research, the circadian rhythm benefits we mentioned above may also have an impact on type 2 diabetes:
Can catching some rays help you fight off type 2 diabetes?
Which way to jump?
A lot of it depends on who you are, ranging from the factors we mentioned earlier, to even such things as “having many moles” or “having blonde hair”.
This latter item, blonde hair, is a dual thing: it’s a matter of genetic factors that align with being prone to being more sensitive to the sun, as well as being a lesser physical barrier to the sun’s rays than dark hair (that can block some UV rays).
So for example, if two people have comparably gray hair now, but one of them used to have dark hair and the other blonde, there will still be a difference in how they suffer damage, or don’t—and yes, even if their skin is visually of the same approximate skintone.
You probably already know for yourself whether you are more likely to burn or tan in the sun, and the former group are less resistant to the sun’s damage… But the latter group are more likely to spend longer in the sun, and accumulate more damage that way.
If you’d like a very comprehensive downloadable, here are the guidelines issued by the UK’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence:
NICE Guidelines | Sunlight exposure: risks and benefits
…and skip to “At risk groups”, if you don’t want to read the whole thing; “Skin type” is also an important subsection, which also uses your hair and eye color as indicators.
Writer’s note: genetics are complicated and not everyone will fall neatly into categories, which is why it’s important to know the individual factors.
For example, I am quite light-skinned with slightly graying dark hair and gray-blue eyes, and/but also have an obscure Sámi gene that means my skin makes vitamin D easily, while simultaneously being unusually resistant to burning (I just tan). Basically: built for the midnight sun of the Arctic circle.
And yet! My hobbies include not getting skin cancer, so I tend to still be quite mindful of UV levels in different weathers and times of day, and make choices (schedule, clothing, sunscreen or not) accordingly.
Bottom line:
That big self-perpetuating nuclear explosion in the sky is responsible for many things, good and bad for our health, so be aware of your own risk factors, especially for vitamin D deficiency, and skin cancer.
- If you have a predisposition to both, that’s unfortunate, but diet and supplementation at least can help with the vitamin D while getting modest amounts of sun at most.
- Remember that you can only make so much vitamin D at once, so sunbathing for health benefits need only take a few minutes
- Remember that sunlight is important for our circadian rhythm, which is important for many things.
- That’s governed by specific photoreceptor cells, though, so we don’t need our skin to be exposed for that; we just need to be able to see sunlight.
- If you’re going to be out in the sun, and not covered up, sunscreen is your friend, and yes, that goes for clear cold days under the winter sun too.
- Most phone weather apps these days have a UV index score as part of the data they give. Get used to checking it as often as you’d check for rain.
Stay safe, both ways around!
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Staying Strong: Tips To Prevent Muscle Loss With Age
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Dr. Andrea Furlan, specialist in physical medicine and rehabilitation with 30 years of experience, has advice:
Fighting sarcopenia
Sarcopenia is so common as to be considered “natural”, but “natural” does not mean “obligatory” and it certainly doesn’t mean “healthy”. As for how to fight it?
You may be thinking “let us guess, is it eat protein and do resistance exercises? And yes it is, but that’s only part of it…
Firstly, she recommends remembering why you are doing this, or because understanding is key to compliance (i.e. your perfect diet and exercise program will mean nothing if you don’t actually do it, and you won’t do it enough to make it a habit, let alone keep it up, if the reasons aren’t clear in your mind).
Sarcopenia comes with an increased risk of falls, reduced physical capacity in general, resultant disability, social isolation, and depression. Of course, this is not a one-to-one equation; you will not necessarily become depressed the moment your muscle mass is below a certain percentage, but statistically speaking, the road to ruin is laid out clearly.
Secondly, she recommends being on the lookout for it. If you check your body composition regularly with a gadget, that’s great and laudable; if you don’t, then a) consider getting one (here’s an example product on Amazon), and b) watch out for decreased muscle strength, fatigue, reduced stamina, noticeable body shape changes with muscle loss and (likely) fat gain.
Thirdly, she recommends more than just regular resistance training and good protein intake. Yes, she recommends those things too, but also getting enough water (can’t rebuild the body without it), avoiding a sedentary lifestyle (sitting leads to atrophy of many supporting and stabilizing muscles, you know, the kind of muscles that don’t look flashy but stop you falling down), and getting good sleep—vital for all kinds of body maintenance, and muscle maintenance is no exception (there’s a reason bodybuilders sleep 9–12 hours daily when in a gaining phase; you don’t need to do that, but don’t skimp on your 7–9 hours, yes, really, even you, yes, at any age).
Lastly, she recommends continuing to learn about the topic, as otherwise it’s easy to go off-track.
For more information on all of the above and more, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
- Protein: How Much Do We Need, Really?
- Resistance Is Useful! (Especially As We Get Older)
- Resistance Beyond Weights
- HIIT, But Make It HIRT ← this is about high-intensity resistance training (HIRT); confusing the muscles like one confuses the heart in HIIT, which thus yields improved results
- Sleep: Yes, You Really Do Still Need It
Take care!
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The Gym For Your Mental Health
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Getting The Most Out Of Therapy
If you’ve never had therapy, what image do you have of it? Perhaps you imagine a bearded and bespectacled man in a suit, impassively making notes on a clipboard. Perhaps you imagine an empathetic woman, with tissues and camomile tea on standby.
The reality is: the experience of therapy can vary, a lot.
In its results, too! Sometimes we may try therapy and think “well that was a waste of time and money”. Sometimes we may try therapy and it’ll change our life.
So… Is there any way to make it less of a lottery?
First: knowledge is power
And while the therapist-client relationship certainly shouldn’t be a power struggle, you do want to be empowered.
So, read about different styles of therapy, and also, read some how-to guides for self-therapy. We’ve recommended some before in previous editions of 10almonds; you can check those books out here:
- How to Be Your Own Therapist: Boost your mood and reduce your anxiety in 10 minutes a day – by Owen O’Kane
- You Are the One You’ve Been Waiting For: Applying Internal Family Systems to Intimate Relationships – by Dr. Richard Schwartz
- DBT Made Simple: A Step-by-Step Guide to Dialectical Behavior Therapy – by Sheri van Dijk
- How to Do the Work: Recognize Your Patterns, Heal from Your Past, and Create Your Self – by Dr. Nicole LaPera
This will serve two purposes:
- You’ll know what to expect out of a therapist
- You can more efficiently “get to work” in therapy
It also, of course, could help you already, without even going to therapy!
Second: begin with the end in mind
A person who does not know what they want to get out of therapy, will likely not get much out of therapy. Or rather, their first task will be to figure that out. So, figure it out in advance, if you can.
Maybe you have a problem that has a specific name, for example poor self-esteem, anxiety, stress, depression, trauma, neuroticism, phobia, etc.
This isn’t Alcoholics Anonymous, and in this case you don’t want a lifetime of “Hello, my name is ______ and I have ______”, if you can help it.
So, what do you want?
- Maybe you want to be able to go to social events without feeling anxious
- Maybe you want your relationship(s) to be more secure and fulfilling
- Maybe you want to no longer have nightmares about that traumatic thing
- Maybe you want to be able to greet each day’s tasks with confidence and without overwhelm
…etc.
A good therapist will help you to set such goals (if you haven’t already), and attain them.
If you’re going the self-therapy route, then this is your job now!
It will probably start with the question: imagine that everything currently troubling you is now healed.
What would that look like, to you?
Third: get a good match for you
Unless you are going entirely the self-therapy route (which can work for some), you will want a therapist who’s a good match for you.
It may take a degree of “suck it and see” trial runs before you find the right one, but that takes time and money, so you’ll want to streamline the process as much as you can. If you do this well, you may be able to find a good therapist for you first time.
For this, personal recommendations (such as from friends) may help more than exmaining academic and institutional affiliations.
Yes, you want a well-qualified therapist who is a member in good standing of a respectable regulated body… but whether your therapist is easy for you to “get on with” will matter at least as much as whether their approach is psychodynamic, or 4th wave CBT, or IFS, or whatever seems popular in your time and place.
Bear in mind:
- Some therapists are specialized in helping with some kinds of things and not others. It will obviously help if the therapist you choose is specialized in the thing you are seeking help for.
- Some therapists may be able to relate to you better (or not), based on simple factors of who they are. To this end, while your therapist certainly doesn’t have to be a mirror image of you, factors like age, gender, race, etc can be relevant and may be worth considering, depending on what you are seeking help with, and what factors impact that thing.
Prefer keeping things to yourself?
Therapy isn’t for everyone, but having a good relationship with oneself definitely is. You might want to invest in one of the books whose reviews we linked above, and you might also get value from previous Psychology Sunday articles, which you can find in our archive (every seventh edition here has a Psychology Sunday main feature):
Click Here To Check Out The 10almonds Archive
To borrow the catchphrase of Dr. Kirk Honda (a therapist and therapy educator with decades of experience):
❝Take care of yourself, because you deserve it; you really, really do.❞
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Fall Asleep In 2 Minutes (Doctor Explains)
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Beyond “sleep hygiene”, Dr. Siobhan Deshauer has insights to share:
Rest for your body and mind
First, do still do the basics. That means dimming/filtering lights for an hour before bed, lowering the room temperature a little, ensuring you have nice fresh sheets, not having alcohol or caffeine before bed, and getting out of bed if you’re not asleep within half an hour, to avoid associating being in bed with wakefulness.
Next, the extra tips:
- Progressive relaxation: tense and relax each muscle group from toes to head
- Box breathing: inhale, hold, exhale, and hold for 4 seconds each; helps calm the nervous system (it’s called “box breathing” because of the 4:4:4:4 setup)
- Diaphragmatic breathing: focus on belly breathing, with longer exhalation to activate the parasympathetic nervous system (note that this can, and even ideally should, be done at the same time as the previous)
- Cognitive shuffling: think of words starting with each letter of a chosen word while visualizing them (this is like “counting sheep”, but does the job better—the job in question being preventing your brain from moving to anything more strenuous or stressful)
For more on all of these plus some extra side-along advice, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
Non-Sleep Deep Rest: A Neurobiologist’s Take ← a way to get many of the benefits of sleep, while awake
Take care!
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Rutin For Your Circulation & More
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Rutin is a bioflavonoid so potent it’s also been called “vitamin P”, and it’s found most abundantly in buckwheat, as well appearing in citrus and some stone fruits (apricots, plums, etc) as well as figs and apples—it’s also found in asparagus, and green and black tea.
So, what does it do?
Quite a lot: The Pharmacological Potential of Rutin
There’s much more there than we have room to cover here, but we’ll pick out a few salient properties to focus on.
First, a word of warning
A lot of the extant science for rutin is in non-human animals. Sometimes, what works for non-human animals doesn’t work for humans; we saw a clear example of this here:
Conjugated Linoleic Acid For Weight Loss?
…in which CLA worked for weight loss in mice, hamsters, chickens, and pigs, but stubbornly not humans.
The state of affairs with the science for rutin isn’t nearly that bad and there are human studies showing efficacy, and indeed, rutin is given to (human) patients with capillary fragility, varicose veins, bruising, or hemorrhoids, for example:
So, we’ll try to give you humans-only sources so far as we can today!
Improving blood flow
Rutin does improve various blood metrics, including various kinds of blood pressure (diastolic, systolic, mean arterial, pulse) and heart rate. At least, it did in humans with type 2 diabetes, and we may reasonably assume these results may be extrapolated to humans without type 2 (or any other) diabetes:
As you may gather from the title, it did also significantly improve serum antioxidant levels, and quality of life (which latter was categorized as: emotional limitations, energy and freshness, mental health, social performance, and general health).
We couldn’t find studies for cardioprotective effects in humans (and of course those couldn’t be RCTs, they’d have to be observational studies, because no ethics board allows inducing heart attacks in humans for the sake of science), but here’s a study using rats (with and without diabetes), showing proof of principle at least:
Anti-Alzheimer’s potential
As ever, a good general rule of thumb is “what’s good for the blood is good for the brain”, and that’s true in this case too.
The title says it all, here:
In case that is not clear: everything in that title after the word “inhibits” is bad for the brain and is implicated in Alzheimer’s disease pathogenesis and progression; in other words, rutin is good against all those bad, Alzheimer’s-favoring things.
Other neuroprotective activity
You may remember from the above-linked research that it helps protect against damage caused by Advanced Glycation End-products (AGEs) (the golden-brown stuff that appears as a result of dry-cooking proteins and fats); it also helps against damage caused by acrylamide (the golden-brown stuff that appears as a result of dry-cooking starches).
Note: in both cases “dry-cooking” includes cooking with oil; it simply means “without water”.
Again, this was a rat study, because no ethics board would have let the researchers fry human brains for science.
Want to try some?
As well as simply enjoying the fruits and vegetables that contain it, it is possible to take a rutin supplement.
We don’t sell it, but here for your convenience is an example product on Amazon 😎
Enjoy!
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