The Diabetes Drugs That Can Cut Asthma Attacks By 70%

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.

Asthma, obesity, and type 2 diabetes are closely linked, with the latter two greatly increasing asthma attack risk.

While bronchodilators / corticosteroids can have immediate adverse effects due to sympathetic nervous system activation, and lasting adverse effects due to the damage it does to metabolic health, diabetes drugs, on the other hand, can improve things with (for most people) fewer unwanted side effects.

Great! Which drugs?

Metformin, and glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1RAs).

Specifically, researchers have found:

  • Metformin is associated with a 30% reduction in asthma attacks
  • GLP-1RAs are associated with a 40% reduction in asthma attacks

…and yes, they stack, making for a 70% reduction in the case of people taking both. Furthermore, the results are independent of weight, glycemic control, or asthma phenotype.

In terms of what was counted, the primary outcome was asthma attacks at 12-month follow-up, defined by oral corticosteroid use, emergency visits, hospitalizations, or death.

The effect of metformin on asthma attacks was not affected by BMI, HbA1c levels, eosinophil count, asthma severity, or sex.

Of the various extra antidiabetic drugs trialled in this study, only GLP-1 receptor agonists showed a further and sustained reduction in asthma attacks.

Here’s the study itself, hot off the press, published on Monday:

JAMA Int. Med. | Antidiabetic Medication and Asthma Attacks

“But what if I’m not diabetic?”

Good news:

More than half of all US adults are eligible for semaglutide therapy ← this is because they’ve expanded the things that semaglutide (the widely-used GLP-1 receptor agonist drug) can be prescribed for, now going beyond just diabetes and/or weight loss 😎

And metformin, of course, is more readily available than semaglutide, so by all means speak with your doctor/pharmacist about that, if it’s of interest to you.

Take care!

Don’t Forget…

Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!

Recommended

  • Is cold water bad for you? The facts behind 5 water myths
  • 6 Signs Of A Heart Attack… A Month In Advance
    Know the early warning signs of a heart attack: unusual fatigue, breathlessness, chest discomfort, and more—and take action to protect your heart.

Learn to Age Gracefully

Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:

  • Saunas: Health Benefits (& Caveats)

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    The Heat Is On

    In Tuesday’s newsletter, we asked you your (health-related) opinion on saunas, and got the above-depicted, below-described, set of responses:

    • About 53% said it is “a healthful activity with many benefits”
    • About 25% said it is “best avoided; I feel like I’m dying in there”
    • About 12% said “it feels good and therefore can’t be all bad”

    So what does the science say?

    The heat of saunas carries a health risk: True or False?

    False, generally speaking, for any practical purposes. Of course, anything in life comes with a health risk, but statistically speaking, your shower at home is a lot more dangerous than a sauna (risk of slipping with no help at hand).

    It took a bit of effort to find a paper on the health risks of saunas, because all the papers on PubMed etc coming up for those keywords were initially papers with “reduces the risk of…”, i.e. ways in which the sauna is healthy.

    However, we did find one:

    ❝Contraindications to sauna bathing include unstable angina pectoris, recent myocardial infarction, and severe aortic stenosis.

    Sauna bathing is safe, however, for most people with coronary heart disease with stable angina pectoris or old myocardial infarction.

    Very few acute myocardial infarctions and sudden deaths occur in saunas, but alcohol consumption during sauna bathing increases the risk of hypotension, arrhythmia, and sudden death, and should be avoided. ❞

    ~ Dr. Matti Hannuksela & Dr. Samer Ellahham

    Source: Benefits and risks of sauna bathing

    So, very safe for most people, safe even for most people with heart disease, but there are exceptions so check with your own doctor of course.

    And drinking alcohol anywhere is bad for the health, but in a sauna it’s a truly terrible idea. As an aside, please don’t drink alcohol in the shower, either (risk of slipping with no help at hand, and this time, broken glass too).

    On the topic of it being safe for most people’s hearts, see also:

    Beneficial effects of sauna bathing for heart failure patients

    As an additional note, those who have a particular sensitivity to the heat, may (again please check with your own doctor, as your case may vary) actually benefit from moderate sauna use, to reduce the cardiovascular strain that your body experiences during heatwaves (remember, you can get out of a sauna more easily than you can get out of a heatwave, so for many people it’s a lot easier to do moderation and improve thermoregulatory responses):

    Passive heat therapy: a promising preventive measure for people at risk of adverse health outcomes during heat extremes

    Sauna usage can bring many health benefits: True or False?

    True! Again, at least for most people. As well as the above-discussed items, here’s one for mortality rates in healthy Finnish men:

    Sauna bathing and mortality risk: unraveling the interaction with systolic blood pressure in a cohort of Finnish men

    Not only that, also…

    ❝The Finnish saunas have the most consistent and robust evidence regarding health benefits and they have been shown to decrease the risk of health outcomes such as hypertension, cardiovascular disease, thromboembolism, dementia, and respiratory conditions; may improve the severity of musculoskeletal disorders, COVID-19, headache and flu, while also improving mental well-being, sleep, and longevity.

    Finnish saunas may also augment the beneficial effects of other protective lifestyle factors such as physical activity.

    The beneficial effects of passive heat therapies may be linked to their anti-inflammatory, cytoprotective and anti-oxidant properties and synergistic effects on neuroendocrine, circulatory, cardiovascular and immune function.

    Passive heat therapies, notably Finnish saunas, are emerging as potentially powerful and holistic strategies to promoting health and extending the healthspan in all populations. ❞

    ~ Dr. Jari Laukkanen & Dr. Setor Kunutsor

    Source: The multifaceted benefits of passive heat therapies for extending the healthspan: A comprehensive review with a focus on Finnish sauna

    (the repeated clarification of “Finnish sauna” is not a matter of fervent nationalism, by the way, but rather a matter of disambiguating it from Swedish sauna, which has some differences, most notably a lack of steam)

    That reminds us: in Scandinavia, it is usual to use a sauna naked, and in Finland in particular, it is a common social activity amongst friends, coworkers, etc. In the US, many people are not so comfortable with nudity, and indeed, many places that provide saunas, may require the wearing of swimwear. But…

    Just one problem: if you’re wearing swimwear because you’ve just been swimming in a pool, you now have chlorinated water soaked into your swimwear, which in the sauna, will become steam + chlorine gas. That’s not so good for your health (and is one reason, beyond tradition and simple normalization, for why swimwear is usually not permitted in Finnish saunas).

    Want to read more?

    You might like our previous main feature,

    Turning Up The Heat Against Diabetes & Alzheimer’s ← you guessed it, sauna may be beneficial against these too

    Take care!

    Share This Post

  • Upgrade Your Life – by Pat Divilly

    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.

    Pat Divilly takes us through the steps to establish what it is we want out of life, adopt daily habits of success, build our self-esteem and confidence, and pursue what’s actually fulfilling, whatever that is for us as individuals.

    The general layout of the book is: first, figuring out where you genuinely want to go (not just where people expect you to want to go!), and then seeing about what things you can change, first small and then larger, to get there.

    The scope of the book covers work life and personal life, and treats them both as something where you can optimize how things work for you, and those around you. All in all, unless your life is literally perfect in every way imaginable, there’s probably something in this book that will help you to, indeed, “upgrade your life”. And who wouldn’t want that?

    Carpe Librum! Get your copy of Upgrade Your Life today!

    Share This Post

  • International Day of Women and Girls in Science

    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.

    Today is the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, so we’ve got a bunch of content for the ladies out there. Let’s start with the statement Sima Bahous (the Executive Director of UN Women) made:

    ❝This year, the sixty-seventh session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW67) will consider as its priority theme “Innovation and technological change, and education in the digital age for achieving gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls”.

    This is an unprecedented opportunity for the Commission to develop a definitive agenda for progress towards women’s full and equal participation and representation in STEM. Its implementation will require bold, coordinated, multi-stakeholder action.❞

    Read Her Full Statement Here!

    Here at 10almonds, we are just one newsletter, and maybe we can’t change the world (…yet), but we’re all for this!

    We’re certainly all in favour of education in the digital age, and more of our subscribers are women and girls than not (highest of fives from your writer today, also a woman—and I do bring most of the sciency content).

    Medical News Today asks “Why Are Women Less Likely To Survive Cardiac Arrest Than Men?”

    You can read the full article here, but the short version is:

    • People (bystanders and EMS professionals alike!) are less likely to intervene to give CPR when the patient is a woman (we appreciate that “your hands on an unknown woman’s chest” is a social taboo, but there’s a time and a place!)
    • People trained to give CPR (volunteers or professionals!) are often less confident about how to do so with female anatomy—training is almost entirely on “male” dummies.

    A quick take-away from this is: to give effective CPR, you need to be giving two-inch compressions!

    On a side note, do you want to learn how to correctly do chest compressions on female anatomy? This short (1:55) video could save a woman’s life!

    As a science-based health and productivity newsletter, we make no apologies if occasional issues sometimes have a slant to women’s health! Heaven help us, the bias in science at large is certainly the opposite:

    The list of examples is far too long for us to include here, but two that spring immediately to mind are:

    Maybe if women in STEM weren’t on the receiving end of rampant systemic misogyny, we’d have more women in science, and some answers by now!

    ❗️NOT-SO-FUN FACT:

    Women make up only 28% of the workforce in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM), and men vastly outnumber women majoring in most STEM fields in college. The gender gaps are particularly high in some of the fastest-growing and highest-paid jobs of the future, like computer science and engineering.

    Source: AAUW

    The US census suggests change is happening, but is a very long way from equality!

    WHAT OUR SUBSCRIBERS SAY:

    ❝Women are slowly gaining more of a place in academia, and slowly making more of a difference when they get there, and start doing research that reflects ourselves. But I still think that it’s a struggle to get there, and it’s a struggle to be heard and be respected.

    It’s a matter of pride, it’s a matter of proving yourself, being in STEM, and [women in STEM] still report being extremely disrespected, not taken seriously all, despite being very very good.

    It’s worth noting as well, that we’ve had women in STEM for a while and there are so many things we appreciate nowadays that they were a part of, but they were never given credit for—it’s still a problem today and something we need to more actively fight.❞

    Isabella F. Lima, Occupational Psychologist

    Are you a woman in STEM, and have a story to tell? We’d love to hear it! Just reply to this email 🙂

    Share This Post

Related Posts

  • Is cold water bad for you? The facts behind 5 water myths
  • Without Medicare Part B’s Shield, Patient’s Family Owes $81,000 for a Single Air-Ambulance Flight

    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.

    Without Medicare Part B’s Shield, Patient’s Family Owes $81,000 for a Single Air-Ambulance Flight

    Debra Prichard was a retired factory worker who was careful with her money, including what she spent on medical care, said her daughter, Alicia Wieberg. “She was the kind of person who didn’t go to the doctor for anything.”

    That ended last year, when the rural Tennessee resident suffered a devastating stroke and several aneurysms. She twice was rushed from her local hospital to Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, 79 miles away, where she was treated by brain specialists. She died Oct. 31 at age 70.

    One of Prichard’s trips to the Nashville hospital was via helicopter ambulance. Wieberg said she had heard such flights could be pricey, but she didn’t realize how extraordinary the charge would be — or how her mother’s skimping on Medicare coverage could leave the family on the hook.

    Then the bill came.

    The Patient: Debra Prichard, who had Medicare Part A insurance before she died.

    Medical Service: An air-ambulance flight to Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

    Service Provider: Med-Trans Corp., a medical transportation service that is part of Global Medical Response, an industry giant backed by private equity investors. The larger company operates in all 50 states and says it has a total of 498 helicopters and airplanes.

    Total Bill: $81,739.40, none of which was covered by insurance.

    What Gives: Sky-high bills from air-ambulance providers have sparked complaints and federal action in recent years.

    For patients with private insurance coverage, the No Surprises Act, which went into effect in 2022, bars air-ambulance companies from billing people more than they would pay if the service were considered “in-network” with their health insurers. For patients with public coverage, such as Medicare or Medicaid, the government sets payment rates at much lower levels than the companies charge.

    But Prichard had opted out of the portion of Medicare that covers ambulance services.

    That meant when the bill arrived less than two weeks after her death, her estate was expected to pay the full air-ambulance fee of nearly $82,000. The main assets are 12 acres of land and her home in Decherd, Tennessee, where she lived for 48 years and raised two children. The bill for a single helicopter ride could eat up roughly a third of the estate’s value, said Wieberg, who is executor.

    The family’s predicament stems from the complicated nature of Medicare coverage.

    Prichard was enrolled only in Medicare Part A, which is free to most Americans 65 or older. That section of the federal insurance program covers inpatient care, and it paid most of her hospital bills, her daughter said.

    But Prichard declined other Medicare coverage, including Part B, which handles such things as doctor visits, outpatient treatment, and ambulance rides. Her daughter suspects she skipped that coverage to avoid the premiums most recipients pay, which currently are about $175 a month.

    Loren Adler, a health economist for the Brookings Institution who studies ambulance bills, estimated the maximum charge that Medicare would have allowed for Prichard’s flight would have been less than $10,000 if she’d signed up for Part B. The patient’s share of that would have been less than $2,000. Her estate might have owed nothing if she’d also purchased supplemental “Medigap” coverage, as many Medicare members do to cover things like coinsurance, he said.

    Nicole Michel, a spokesperson for Global Medical Response, the ambulance provider, agreed with Adler’s estimate that Medicare would have limited the charge for the flight to less than $10,000. But she said the federal program’s payment rates don’t cover the cost of providing air-ambulance services.

    “Our patient advocacy team is actively engaged with Ms. Wieberg’s attorney to determine if there was any other applicable medical coverage on the date of service that we could bill to,” Michel wrote in an email to KFF Health News. “If not, we are fully committed to working with Ms. Wieberg, as we do with all our patients, to find an equitable solution.”

    The Resolution: In mid-February, Wieberg said the company had not offered to reduce the bill.

    Wieberg said she and the attorney handling her mother’s estate both contacted the company, seeking a reduction in the bill. She said she also contacted Medicare officials, filled out a form on the No Surprises Act website, and filed a complaint with Tennessee regulators who oversee ambulance services. She said she was notified Feb. 12 that the company filed a legal claim against the estate for the entire amount.

    Wieberg said other health care providers, including ground ambulance services and the Vanderbilt hospital, wound up waiving several thousand dollars in unpaid fees for services they provided to Prichard that are normally covered by Medicare Part B.

    But as it stands, Prichard’s estate owes about $81,740 to the air-ambulance company.

    More from Bill of the Month

    The Takeaway: People who are eligible for Medicare are encouraged to sign up for Part B, unless they have private health insurance through an employer or spouse.

    “If someone with Medicare finds that they are having difficulty paying the Medicare Part B premiums, there are resources available to help compare Medicare coverage choices and learn about options to help pay for Medicare costs,” Meena Seshamani, director of the federal Center for Medicare, said in an email to KFF Health News.

    She noted that every state offers free counseling to help people navigate Medicare.

    In Tennessee, that counseling is offered by the State Health Insurance Assistance Program. Its director, Lori Galbreath, told KFF Health News she wishes more seniors would discuss their health coverage options with trained counselors like hers.

    “Every Medicare recipient’s experience is different,” she said. “We can look at their different situations and give them an unbiased view of what their next best steps could be.”

    Counselors advise that many people with modest incomes enroll in a Medicare Savings Program, which can cover their Part B premiums. In 2023, Tennessee residents could qualify for such assistance if they made less than $1,660 monthly as a single person or $2,239 as a married couple. Many people also could obtain help with other out-of-pocket expenses, such as copays for medical services.

    Wieberg, who lives in Missouri, has been preparing the family home for sale.

    She said the struggle over her mother’s air-ambulance bill makes her wonder why Medicare is split into pieces, with free coverage for inpatient care under Part A, but premiums for coverage of other crucial services under Part B.

    “Anybody past the age of 70 is likely going to need both,” she said. “And so why make it a decision of what you can afford or not afford, or what you think you’re going to use or not use?”

    Bill of the Month is a crowdsourced investigation by KFF Health News and NPR that dissects and explains medical bills. Do you have an interesting medical bill you want to share with us? Tell us about it!

    KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

    Subscribe to KFF Health News’ free Morning Briefing.

    Don’t Forget…

    Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!

    Learn to Age Gracefully

    Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:

  • Optimal Black Pepper Dosage and Supplement

    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.

    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

    Don’t Forget…

    Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!

    Learn to Age Gracefully

    Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:

  • Imposter Syndrome (and why almost everyone has it)

    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.

    Imposter Syndrome (and why almost everyone has it)

    Imposter syndrome is the pervasive idea that we’re not actually good enough, people think we are better than we are, and at any moment we’re going to get found out and disappoint everyone.

    Beyond the workplace

    Imposter syndrome is most associated with professionals. It can range from a medical professional who feels like they’ve been projecting an image of confidence too much, to a writer or musician who is sure that their next piece will never live up to the acclaim of previous pieces and everyone will suddenly realize they don’t know what they’re doing, to a middle-manager who feels like nobody above or below them realizes how little they know how to do.

    But! Less talked-about (but no less prevalent) is imposter syndrome in other areas of life. New parents tend to feel this strongly, as can the “elders” of a family that everyone looks to for advice and strength and support. Perhaps worst is when the person most responsible for the finances of a household feels like everyone just trusts them to keep everything running smoothly, and maybe they shouldn’t because it could all come crashing down at any moment and everyone will see them for the hopeless shambles of a human being that they really are.

    Feelings are not facts

    And yet (while everyone makes mistakes sometimes) the reality is that we’re all doing our best. Given that imposter syndrome affects up to 82% of people, let’s remember to have some perspective. Everyone feels like they’re winging it sometimes. Everyone feels the pressure.

    Well, perhaps not everyone. There’s that other 18%. Some people are sure they’re the best thing ever. Then again, there’s probably some in that 18% that actually feel worse than the 82%—they just couldn’t admit it, even in an anonymized study.

    But one thing’s for sure: it’s very, very common. Especially in high-performing women, by the way, and people of color. In other words, people who typically “have to do twice as much to get recognized as half as good”.

    That said, the flipside of this is that people who are not in any of those categories may feel “everything is in my favor, so I really have no excuse to not achieve the most”, and can sometimes take very extreme actions to try to avoid perceived failure, and it can be their family that pays the price.

    Things to remember

    If you find imposter syndrome nagging at you, remember these things:

    • There are people far less competent than you, doing the same thing
    • Nobody knows how to do everything themselves, especially at first
    • If you don’t know how to do something, you can usually find out
    • There is always someone to ask for help, or at least advice, or at least support

    At the end of the day, we evolved to eat fruit and enjoy the sun. None of us are fully equipped for all the challenges of the modern world, but if we do our reasonable best, and look after each other (and that means that you too, dear reader, deserve looking after as well), we can all do ok.

    Don’t Forget…

    Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!

    Learn to Age Gracefully

    Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails: