The Dental Diet – by Dr. Steven Lin

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As it turns out, there’s a lot more to healthy teeth than skipping the sugar and getting some calcium.

The author’s journey started with the realization that most of his work as a dentist should be unnecessary, and not just in the “you should have been flossing” sense. Rather, he came to the same conclusions as his fellow dentist Weston Price before him, and this time (unlike Price) he stuck to his own field, dentistry—meaning that the conclusions he kept were the more valid ones.

Another thing he does better than Price is that he contextualizes the information—we don’t need, for example, to be eating seal fat as a main component of our diet, but we do need to be getting sufficient amounts of certain fat-soluble vitamins. And most people aren’t. Same with what’s good or bad for our oral microbiome, and by extension, our saliva, and by extension, our teeth and gums.

There’s a lot of nutritional information in here; macros and micronutrients alike, but the book goes further than that, to also recommend minimally-processed food that requires more chewing, for example. Not just for its nutritional content, but because that helps our teeth move to (and then stay) where they are ideally supposed to be. No amount of perfectly-blended nutritional supplement drink will align your maxilla for you, say. But chomping on raw carrots? Different story.

Dr. Lin offers a 40-day meal plan, but aware that if you’re vegetarian or vegan you’re probably going to have to rethink it yourself using the information he gives, because his meal plan includes animal products.

Bottom line: if you’d like to eat for better oral health (nutritionally, physically, and for your oral microbiome), this book has all the information you’ll need.

Click here to check out The Dental Diet, and improve yours!

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  • What’s the difference between vegan and vegetarian?

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    What’s the difference? is a new editorial product that explains the similarities and differences between commonly confused health and medical terms, and why they matter.

    Vegan and vegetarian diets are plant-based diets. Both include plant foods, such as fruits, vegetables, legumes and whole grains.

    But there are important differences, and knowing what you can and can’t eat when it comes to a vegan and vegetarian diet can be confusing.

    So, what’s the main difference?

    Creative Cat Studio/Shutterstock

    What’s a vegan diet?

    A vegan diet is an entirely plant-based diet. It doesn’t include any meat and animal products. So, no meat, poultry, fish, seafood, eggs, dairy or honey.

    What’s a vegetarian diet?

    A vegetarian diet is a plant-based diet that generally excludes meat, poultry, fish and seafood, but can include animal products. So, unlike a vegan diet, a vegetarian diet can include eggs, dairy and honey.

    But you may be wondering why you’ve heard of vegetarians who eat fish, vegetarians who don’t eat eggs, vegetarians who don’t eat dairy, and even vegetarians who eat some meat. Well, it’s because there are variations on a vegetarian diet:

    • a lacto-ovo vegetarian diet excludes meat, poultry, fish and seafood, but includes eggs, dairy and honey
    • an ovo-vegetarian diet excludes meat, poultry, fish, seafood and dairy, but includes eggs and honey
    • a lacto-vegetarian diet excludes meat, poultry, fish, seafood and eggs, but includes dairy and honey
    • a pescatarian diet excludes meat and poultry, but includes eggs, dairy, honey, fish and seafood
    • a flexitarian, or semi-vegetarian diet, includes eggs, dairy and honey and may include small amounts of meat, poultry, fish and seafood.

    Are these diets healthy?

    A 2023 review looked at the health effects of vegetarian and vegan diets from two types of study.

    Observational studies followed people over the years to see how their diets were linked to their health. In these studies, eating a vegetarian diet was associated with a lower risk of developing cardiovascular disease (such as heart disease or a stroke), diabetes, hypertension (high blood pressure), dementia and cancer.

    For example, in a study of 44,561 participants, the risk of heart disease was 32% lower in vegetarians than non-vegetarians after an average follow-up of nearly 12 years.

    Further evidence came from randomised controlled trials. These instruct study participants to eat a specific diet for a specific period of time and monitor their health throughout. These studies showed eating a vegetarian or vegan diet led to reductions in weight, blood pressure, and levels of unhealthy cholesterol.

    For example, one analysis combined data from seven randomised controlled trials. This so-called meta-analysis included data from 311 participants. It showed eating a vegetarian diet was associated with a systolic blood pressure (the first number in your blood pressure reading) an average 5 mmHg lower compared with non-vegetarian diets.

    It seems vegetarian diets are more likely to be healthier, across a number of measures.

    For example, a 2022 meta-analysis combined the results of several observational studies. It concluded a vegetarian diet, rather than vegan diet, was recommended to prevent heart disease.

    There is also evidence vegans are more likely to have bone fractures than vegetarians. This could be partly due to a lower body-mass index and a lower intake of nutrients such as calcium, vitamin D and protein.

    But it can be about more than just food

    Many vegans, where possible, do not use products that directly or indirectly involve using animals.

    So vegans would not wear leather, wool or silk clothing, for example. And they would not use soaps or candles made from beeswax, or use products tested on animals.

    The motivation for following a vegan or vegetarian diet can vary from person to person. Common motivations include health, environmental, ethical, religious or economic reasons.

    And for many people who follow a vegan or vegetarian diet, this forms a central part of their identity.

    Woman wearing and pointing to her t-shirt with 'Go vegan' logo
    More than a diet: veganism can form part of someone’s identity. Shutterstock

    So, should I adopt a vegan or vegetarian diet?

    If you are thinking about a vegan or vegetarian diet, here are some things to consider:

    • eating more plant foods does not automatically mean you are eating a healthier diet. Hot chips, biscuits and soft drinks can all be vegan or vegetarian foods. And many plant-based alternatives, such as plant-based sausages, can be high in added salt
    • meeting the nutrient intake targets for vitamin B12, iron, calcium, and iodine requires more careful planning while on a vegan or vegetarian diet. This is because meat, seafood and animal products are good sources of these vitamins and minerals
    • eating a plant-based diet doesn’t necessarily mean excluding all meat and animal products. A healthy flexitarian diet prioritises eating more whole plant-foods, such as vegetables and beans, and less processed meat, such as bacon and sausages
    • the Australian Dietary Guidelines recommend eating a wide variety of foods from the five food groups (fruit, vegetables, cereals, lean meat and/or their alternatives and reduced-fat dairy products and/or their alternatives). So if you are eating animal products, choose lean, reduced-fat meats and dairy products and limit processed meats.

    Katherine Livingstone, NHMRC Emerging Leadership Fellow and Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Physical Activity and Nutrition, Deakin University

    This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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  • JoyFull – by Radhi Devlukia-Shetty

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    We haven’t done a recipe book in a little while, so here’s a good one!

    The focus of this book is getting more plants and spices into your diet, and doing it deliciously.

    Healthwise, there is nothing controversial here: the recipes are all plant-based, mostly whole-foods, and the items that aren’t whole foods are things like “vanilla extract”.

    The recipes themselves (of which there are 125) are presented clearly and simply, one to a double-page (although sometimes there will be a suggested variation on the same double-page), ideal for use in a kitchen bookstand. For each recipe, there’s a clear photo of the end result, so you know what you’re working towards.

    The ingredients are not too obscure, and can be acquired from more or less any large supermarket.

    Bottom line: if you’re looking to expand your plant-based cooking repertoire in a way that’s not just substitutions, then this book provides an excellent variety.

    Click here to check out JoyFull, and get a taste of Ayurvedic cooking!

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  • Healing After Loss – by Martha Hickman

    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.

    Mental health is also just health, and this book’s about an underexamined area of mental health. We say “underexamined”, because for something that affects almost everyone sooner or later, there’s not nearly so much science being done about it as other areas of mental health.

    This is not a book of science per se, but it is a very useful one. The format is:

    Each calendar day of the year, there’s a daily reflection, consisting of:

    • A one-liner insight about grief, quoted from somebody
    • A page of thoughts about this
    • A one-liner summary, often formulated as a piece of advice

    The book is not religious in content, though the author does occasionally make reference to God, only in the most abstract way that shouldn’t be offputting to any but the most stridently anti-religious readers.

    Bottom line: if this is a subject near to your heart, then you will almost certainly benefit from this daily reader.

    Click here to check out Healing After Loss, and indeed heal after loss

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Related Posts

  • Eat Dirt – by Dr. Josh Axe
  • Language Fluency Beats General Intelligence & Memory For Longevity

    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.

    And no, it doesn’t have to be a second language, although that helps a lot:

    An Underrated Tool Against Alzheimer’s ← you don’t even have to learn the second language to a high level, to benefit

    Rather, what we’re talking about today is your first language fluency. So, for most of our readers, English. For the study participants it was German, because this was a German research team using data from the German population.

    The Berlin Aging Study

    Previous research has linked intelligence to longevity, but intelligence comprises multiple traits. So, what’s most important? Memory? General intelligence? Nope. Language fluency!

    Let’s clarify something before we continue: “fluency” does not, in linguistics, mean what most people use it to mean. It’s not about the size of one’s overall knowledge of the language (e.g. vocabulary size), but rather, it is about one’s ability to speak and/or write fluently—literally, fluently means “flowingly”, i.e. without undue hesitation or difficulty.

    The study used data from the Berlin Aging Study, which tracked 516 people aged 70–105 from 1989 onwards.

    Researchers assessed four cognitive abilities, with two kinds of tests for each of:

    • Verbal fluency (detailed description below)
    • Perceptual speed (pattern-recognition speed)
    • Verbal knowledge (vocabulary size)
    • Episodic memory (personal memory recall)

    General intelligence, meanwhile, was assessed as “the average of those 8 scores”.

    The two tests for the cognitive ability of “verbal fluency” were:

    Categories

    Participants had to name as many different animals as possible within 90 seconds. Their answers were subsequently rated for correctness by two independent research assistants, to assure that noticed or unnoticed repetitions, wrong categories, and morphological variants were not coded as correct.

    Word beginnings

    Participants were asked to name as many different real words starting with the letter s as possible within 90 seconds. The named words were rated for correctness by two independent research assistants to avoid considering repetitions, morphological variants, and wrong words as correct.

    You can read about these and the other tests for the other cognitive abilities, in the paper itself:

    Verbal Fluency Selectively Predicts Survival in Old and Very Old Age ← if you’re looking for the test descriptions, scroll to “Method” and then scroll past the table, and you’ll see the test descriptions

    They found that of all these metrics, only the two verbal fluency tests (and none of the other tests) showed a significant link to longevity.

    Why this is important

    Although the study does not prove causality (it could be that people who are predisposed to live longer for other reasons are more verbally fluent because of some common factor that influences both language fluency and longevity), it seems as good a reason as any to develop and maintain language fluency.

    This builds on what was found in “The Nun Study“, that followed a convent of nuns (because they are a very homogenous sample in terms of occupation, location, diet, routine, etc, so a lot of confounding factors were already controlled-for) and made numerous major discoveries about things that impact aging (including the relevance of the APOE4 gene! That was The Nun Study).

    When it came to nuns and language…

    Based on the autobiographies written by the nuns in their youth upon taking their vows, there were two factors that were later correlated with not getting dementia:

    • Longer sentences
    • Positive outlook
    • “Idea density”

    That latter item means the relative linguistic density of ideas and complexity thereof, and the fluency and vivacity with which they were expressed (this was not a wishy-washy assessment; there was a hard-science analysis to determine numbers).

    Want to spruce up yours? You might like to check out:

    Reading, Better: Reading As A Cognitive Exercise

    …for specific, evidence-based ways to tweak your reading to fight cognitive decline.

    Take care!

    Don’t Forget…

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  • No, COVID-19 vaccines don’t cause ‘turbo cancer’

    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.

    What you need to know

    • COVID-19 vaccines do not cause “turbo cancer” or contain SV40, a virus that has been suspected of causing cancer.
    • There is no link between rising cancer rates and COVID-19 vaccines.
    • Staying up to date on COVID-19 vaccines is a safe, free way to support long-term health.

    Myths that COVID-19 vaccines cause cancer have been circulating since the vaccines were first developed. These false claims resurfaced last month after Princess Kate Middleton announced that she is undergoing cancer treatment, with some vaccine opponents falsely claiming Middleton has a “turbo cancer” caused by COVID-19 vaccines.

    Here’s what we know: “Turbo cancer” is a made-up term for a fake phenomenon, and there is strong evidence that COVID-19 vaccines do not cause cancer or increase cancer risk.

    Read on to learn how to recognize false claims about COVID-19 vaccines and cancer.


    Do COVID-19 vaccines contain cancer-causing ingredients?

    No. Some vaccine opponents claim that COVID-19 vaccines contain SV40, a virus that has been suspected of causing cancer. This claim is false.

    A piece of SV40’s DNA sequence—called a “promoter”—was used as starting material to develop COVID-19 vaccines, but the virus itself is not present in the vaccines. The promoter does not contain the part of the virus that enters the cell nucleus, so it poses no risk.

    COVID-19 vaccines and their ingredients have been rigorously studied in millions of people worldwide and have been determined to be safe. The National Cancer Institute and the American Cancer Society agree that COVID-19 vaccines do not increase cancer risk or accelerate cancer growth.

    Why are cancer rates rising in the U.S.?

    Since the 1990s, cancer rates have been on the rise globally and in the U.S., most notably in people under 50. Increased cancer screening may partially explain the rising number of cancer diagnoses. Exposure to air pollution and lifestyle factors like tobacco use, alcohol use, and diet may also be contributing factors.

    What are the benefits of staying up to date on COVID-19 vaccines?

    Staying up to date on COVID-19 vaccines is a safe way to protect our long-term health. COVID-19 vaccines prevent severe illness, hospitalization, death, and long COVID.

    The CDC says staying up to date on COVID-19 vaccines is a safer and more reliable way to build protection against COVID-19 than getting sick from COVID-19.

    For more information, talk to your health care provider.

    This article first appeared on Public Good News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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  • Your Health Audit, From Head To Toe

    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.

    Health Audit Time

    Here at 10almonds, we often cover quite specific things, ranging from “the effect of sodium on organs other than your heart” to “make this one small change to save your knees while driving”.

    But, we’re each a whole person, and we need to take care of the whole organism that makes up the wonderful being that we each are. If we let one part of it drop in health too much, the others will soon follow suit because of the knock-on effects.

    So, let’s do a quick self-check-up, and see what can be done for each! How’s your…

    Mental Health

    We’re doing this audit head-to-to, so let’s start it here, because mental health is also just health, and it’s difficult to tackle the others without having this one at least under control!

    Are you experiencing chronic stress? Anxiety? Depression? Joy?

    If you answered “no” to “joy” but also “no” to “depression”, you might want to rethink your answer to “depression”, by the way. Life should be a joyous thing!

    Some resources to address your mental health:

    Brain Health

    Your brain is a big, powerful organ. It uses more of your daily energy (in the physiological sense of the word, we’re talking calories and mitochondria and ATP) than any other organ, by far.

    And when it comes to organ failure, if your brain fails, then having the best joints in the world won’t help you, for example.

    Some resources to address your brain health:

    Heart Health

    Everything depends on your heart, head to toe. Tirelessly pumping blood with oxygen, nutrients, and agents of your immune system all around your body, all day every day for your entire life.

    What’s your resting heart rate like? How about your blood pressure? And while we’re on the topic of blood… how’s your blood sugar health?

    These are all important things to a) know about and b) keep on top of!

    Some resources to address your heart health:

    Gut Health

    By cell count, we’re about 10% human and 90% bacteria. By gene count, also. Pretty important, therefore, that we look after our trillions of tiny friends that keep our organism working.

    Most people in N. America, for example, get vastly under the recommended daily amount of fiber, and that’s just the most basic courtesy we could do for these bugs that keep us alive (they need that fiber to live, and their process of consuming it is beneficial to us in a stack of ways).

    Some resources to address your gut health:

    Hormonal Health

    Hormones are weird and wonderful and affect so much more than the obvious sex-related functions (but yes, those too). A lot of people don’t realize it, but having our hormones in good order or not can make the difference between abject misery and a happy, fulfilling life.

    Some resources to address your hormonal health:

    Bone/Joint Health

    Fear nothing! For you are a ghost operating a skeleton clad in flesh. But also, you know, look after that skeleton; you only get one! Being animals, we’re all about movement, and being humans, we’ve ended up with some lifestyle situations that aren’t great for that mobility. We sit too much; we walk too little; we cramp ourselves into weird positions (driving, anyone?), and we forget the range of motion we’re supposed to have. But let’s remember…

    Some resources to address your bone/joint health:

    Lastly…

    While it’s good to do a little self-audit like this every now and again, it’s even better to get a professional check-up!

    As engineers say: if you don’t schedule time for maintenance, your equipment will schedule it for you.

    Don’t Forget…

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    Learn to Age Gracefully

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