The Diabetes Drugs That Can Cut Asthma Attacks By 70%
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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!
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Mouthwatering Protein Falafel
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Baking falafel, rather than frying it, has a strength and a weakness. The strength: it is less effort and you can do more at once. The weakness: it can easily get dry. This recipe calls for baking them in a way that won’t get dry, and the secret is one of its protein ingredients: peas! Add to this the spices and a tahini sauce, and you’ve a mouthwatering feast that’s full of protein, fiber, polyphenols, and even healthy fats.
You will need
- 1 cup peas, cooked
- 1 can chickpeas, drained and rinsed (keep the chickpea water—also called aquafaba—aside, as we’ll be using some of it later)
- ½ small red onion, chopped
- 1 handful fresh mint, chopped
- 1 tbsp fresh parsley, chopped
- ½ bulb garlic, crushed
- 1 tbsp lemon juice
- 1 tbsp chickpea flour (also called gram flour, besan flour, or garbanzo bean flour) plus more for dusting
- 2 tsp red chili flakes (adjust per heat preferences)
- 2 tsp black pepper, coarse ground
- 1 tsp ground turmeric
- ½ tsp MSG or 1 tsp low-sodium salt
- Extra virgin olive oil
For the tahini sauce:
- 2 tbsp tahini
- 2 tbsp lemon juice
- ¼ bulb garlic, crushed
- 5 tbsp aquafaba (if for some reason you don’t have it, such as for example you substituted 1 cup chickpeas that you cooked yourself, substitute with water here)
To serve:
- Flatbreads (you can use our Healthy Homemade Flatbreads recipe if you like)
- Leafy salad
Method
(we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)
1) Preheat the oven to 350℉ / 180℃.
2) Blend the peas and chickpeas in a food processor for a few seconds. You want a coarse mixture, not a paste.
3) Add the rest of the main section ingredients except the olive oil, and blend again for a few more seconds. It should still have a chunky texture, or else you will have made hummus. If you accidentally make hummus, set your hummus aside and start again on the falafels.
4) Shape the mixture into balls; if it lacks structural integrity, fold in a little more chickpea flour until the balls stay in shape. Either way, once you have done that, dust the balls in chickpea flour.
5) Brush the balls in a little olive oil, as you put them on a baking tray lined with baking paper. Bake for 15–18 minutes until golden, turning partway through.
6) While you are waiting, making the tahini sauce by combining the tahini sauce ingredients in a high-speed blender and processing on high until smooth. If you do not have a small enough blender (a bullet-style blender should work for this), then do it manually, which means you’ll have to crush the garlic all the way into a smooth paste, such as with a pestle and mortar, or alternatively, use ready-made garlic paste—and then simply whisk the ingredients together until smooth.
7) Serve the falafels warm or cold, on flatbreads with leafy salad and the tahini sauce.
Enjoy!
Want to learn more?
For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:
- Tahini vs Hummus – Which is Healthier?
- Our Top 5 Spices: How Much Is Enough For Benefits? ← we scored 4/5 today!
Take care!
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100 Ways to Change Your Life – by Liz Moody
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Sometimes we crave changing things up, just to feel something new. This can result in anything from bad haircut decisions or impulsive purchases, to crashing and burning-out of a job, project, or relationship. It doesn’t have to be that way, though!
This book brings us (as the title suggest) 100 evidence-based ways of changing things up in a good way—small things that can make a big difference in many areas of life.
In terms of format, these are presented in 100 tiny chapters, each approximately 2 pages long (obviously it depends on the edition, but you get the idea). Great to read in any of at least three ways:
- Cover-to-cover
- One per day for 100 days
- Look up what you need on an ad hoc basis
Bottom line: even if you already do half of these things, the other half will each compound your health happiness one-by-one as you add them. This is a very enjoyable and practical book!
Click here to check out 100 Ways to Change Your Life, and level-up yours!
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One More Resource Against Osteoporosis!
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Your Bones Were Made For Moving Too!
We know that to look after bone health, resistance training is generally what’s indicated. Indeed, we mentioned it yesterday, and we’ve talked about it before:
Resistance Is Useful! (Especially As We Get Older)
We also know that if you have osteoporosis already, some exercises are a better or worse idea than others:
Osteoporosis & Exercises: Which To Do (And Which To Avoid)
However! New research suggests that also getting in your recommended 150 minutes per week of moderate exercise slows bone density loss.
The study by Dr. Tiina Savikangas et al. looked at 299 people in their 70s (just over half being women) and found that, over the course of a year, bone mineral density loss was inversely correlated with moderate exercise as recorded by an accelerometer (as found in most fitness-tracking wearables and smartphones).
In other words: those who got more minutes of exercise, kept more bone mineral density.
As well as monitoring bone mineral density, the study also looked at cross-sectional area, but that remained stable throughout.
As for how much is needed:
❝Even short bursts of activity can be significant for the skeleton, so we also looked at movement in terms of the number and intensity of individual impacts. For example, walking and running cause impacts of different intensities.
We found that impacts that were comparable to at least brisk walking were associated with better preservation of bone mineral density.❞
Read more: Impacts during everyday physical activity can slow bone loss ← pop-science source, interviewing the lead researcher
On which note, we’ve a small bone to pick…
As a small correction, the pop-science source says that the subjects’ ages ranged from 70 to 85 years; the paper, meanwhile, clearly shows that the age-range was 74.4±3.9 years (shown in the “Results” table), rounded to 74.4 ± 4 years, in the abstract. So, certainly no participant was older than 78 years and four months.
Why this matters: the age range itself may be critical or it might not, but what is important is that this highlights how we shouldn’t just believe figures cited in pop-science articles, and it’s always good to click through to the source!
This paper is a particularly fascinating read if you have time, because—unlike a lot of studies—they really took great care to note what exactly can and cannot be inferred from the data, and how and why.
Especially noteworthy was the diligence with which they either controlled for, or recognized that they could not control for, far more variables than most studies even bother to mention.
This kind of transparency is critical for good science, and we’d love to see more of it!
Want to apply this to your life?
Tracking minutes-of-movement is one of the things that fitness trackers are best at, so connect your favourite app (one of these days we’ll do a fitness tracker comparison article) and get moving!
And as for the other things that fitness trackers do? As it turns out, they do have their strengths and weaknesses, which are good to bear in mind:
Take care!
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Rest For The Restless (Legs)
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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
❝Any tips for dealing with restless legs syndrome?❞
As a neurological disorder (Willis-Ekbom Disease, as it is also called
by almost nobody outside of academia), there’s a lot that’s not known about its pathology, but we do know that looking after one’s nerves can help a lot.This means:
- Avoid alcohol, as this is bad for everything, including nerves
- See also: How To Reduce Or Quit Alcohol
- Don’t smoke, as this is bad for everything, including nerves
- Do exercise those restless legs! It may sound funny, but in seriousness, movement promotes nerve health
- See also: Walking… Better.
- Take care of your blood sugars, because diabetic neuropathy can also cause this
- See also: 10 Ways To Balance Blood Sugars
- Massage your legs, and enjoy a hot bath/shower
You can also take into account the measures recommended for dealing with peripheral neuropathy, e.g:
Peripheral Neuropathy: How To Avoid It, Manage It, Treat It
There are also medication options for RLS; most of them are dopamine agonists, so if you want to try something yourself before going the pharmaceutical route, then things that improve your dopamine levels will probably be a worth checking out. In the category of supplements, you might enjoy:
NALT: The Dopamine Precursor And More
Take care! And… Want something answered here? Send us your questions!
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- Avoid alcohol, as this is bad for everything, including nerves
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How Your Exercise Today Gives A Brain Boost Tomorrow
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Regular 10almonds readers may remember we not long back wrote about a study that showed how daily activity levels, in aggregate, make a difference to brain health over the course of 1–2 weeks (in fact, it was a 9-day study):
Daily Activity Levels & The Measurable Difference They Make To Brain Health
Today, we’re going to talk about a new (published today, at time of writing) study that shows the associations between daily exercise levels (amongst other things) and how well people performed in cognitive tests the next day.
By this we mean: they recorded exercise vs sedentary behavior vs sleep on a daily basis (using wearable tech to track it), and tested them daily with cognitive tests, and looked at how the previous day’s activities (or lack thereof) impacted the next day’s test results.
Notably, the sample was of older adults (aged 50–83). The sample size wasn’t huge but was statistically significant (n=76) and the researchers are of course calling for more studies to be done with more people.
What they found
To put their findings into few words:
- Consistent light exercise boosts general cognitive performance not just for hours (which was already known) but through the next day.
- More moderate or vigorous activity than usual in particular led to better working memory and episodic memory the next day.
- More sleep (especially slow-wave deep sleep) improved episodic memory and psychomotor speed.
- Sedentary behavior was associated with poorer working memory.
Let’s define some terms:
- general cognitive performance = average of scores across the different tests
- working memory = very short term memory, such as remembering what you came into this room for, or (as an example of a test format) being able to take down a multi-digit number in one go without it being broken down (and then, testing with longer lengths of number until failure)
- episodic memory = memory of events in a narrative context, where and when they happened, etc
- psychomotor speed = the speed of connection between perception and reaction in quick-response tests
These are, of course, all useful things to have, which means the general advice here is to:
- move more, generally
- exercise more, specifically
- sit less, whenever reasonably possible
- sleep well
You can read the study itself here:
Want to know the best kind of exercise for brain health?
Check out our article about neuroscientist Dr. Suzuki, and what she has to say about it:
The Exercise That Protects Your Brain
Enjoy!
Don’t Forget…
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Which Magnesium? (And: When?)
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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
❝Good morning! I have been waiting for this day to ask: the magnesium in my calcium supplement is neither of the two versions you mentioned in a recent email newsletter. Is this a good type of magnesium and is it efficiently bioavailable in this composition? I also take magnesium that says it is elemental (oxide, gluconate, and lactate). Are these absorbable and useful in these sources? I am not interested in taking things if they aren’t helping me or making me healthier. Thank you for your wonderful, informative newsletter. It’s so nice to get non-biased information❞
Thank you for the kind words! We certainly do our best.
For reference: the attached image showed a supplement containing “Magnesium (as Magnesium Oxide & AlgaeCal® l.superpositum)”
Also for reference: the two versions we compared head-to-head were these very good options:
Magnesium Glycinate vs Magnesium Citrate – Which is Healthier?
Let’s first borrow from the above, where we mentioned: magnesium oxide is probably the most widely-sold magnesium supplement because it’s cheapest to make. It also has woeful bioavailability, to the point that there seems to be negligible benefit to taking it. So we don’t recommend that.
As for magnesium gluconate and magnesium lactate:
- Magnesium lactate has very good bioavailability and in cases where people have problems with other types (e.g. gastrointestinal side effects), this will probably not trigger those.
- Magnesium gluconate has excellent bioavailability, probably coming second only to magnesium glycinate.
The “AlgaeCal® l.superpositum” supplement is a little opaque (and we did ntoice they didn’t specify what percentage of the magnesium is magnesium oxide, and what percentage is from the algae, meaning it could be a 99:1 ratio split, just so that they can claim it’s in there), but we can say Lithothamnion superpositum is indeed an algae and magnesium from green things is usually good.
Except…
It’s generally best not to take magnesium and calcium together (as that supplement contains). While they do work synergistically once absorbed, they compete for absorption first so it’s best to take them separately. Because of magnesium’s sleep-improving qualities, many people take calcium in the morning, and magnesium in the evening, for this reason.
Some previous articles you might enjoy meanwhile:
- Pinpointing The Usefulness Of Acupuncture
- Science-Based Alternative Pain Relief
- Peripheral Neuropathy: How To Avoid It, Manage It, Treat It
- What Does Lion’s Mane Actually Do, Anyway?
Take care!
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:
