The Dietary Change That Turns Hair Cells & Skin Cells Into Each Other
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…and other items from this week’s health news:
Hair today, skin tomorrow?
Hair follicle stem cells (HFSCs), best known for maintaining hair growth, have shown they can also skin repair when needed, by “switching teams” and becoming skin cells.
A key trigger for this shift is the availability of serine—a non-essential amino acid found in foods like meats, animal milks, and grains. When serine levels drop, either through diet or metabolic disruption, the stress response kicks in, prompting HFSCs to pause hair production and focus instead on healing damaged skin; this becomes even more pronounced when the skin is injured—which prompts HFSCs to strongly favor wound repair over hair regeneration, accelerating the healing process.
While reducing serine intake helps strongly push HFSCs toward repair mode, doing the opposite and increasing dietary serine only modestly boosts hair growth, suggesting that the body tightly controls circulating serine levels:
Read in full: Restricting 1 amino acid in food could speed wound healing
Related: The Diet That Slows Skin Aging
Healthy heart, healthy everything else
At 10almonds we often say “healthy heart; healthy brain“, because the former feeds the latter (with oxygen and nutrients) and plays its part in ultimately taking away detritus (thus avoiding build-ups of harmful proteins that are implicated in Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, amongst other dementias).
However, the same is also true for the rest of the body, making heart health truly critical to every other kind of health—for example, a review of hundreds of studies found that people with heart-healthy lifestyles were more likely to preserve brain and lung function, vision, hearing, muscle strength, and dental health as they aged.
Beyond that, they also had lower risks of stress, chronic diseases (e.g. cancer, diabetes, COPD, dementia, fatty liver disease), and mental health conditions like depression:
Read in full: Heart-healthy habits benefit entire body from head to toe, study finds
Related: Your Health Audit, From Head To Toe
Good news for late-night snack-artists
“Don’t eat late at night!”, the common advice goes.
Researchers (Dr. Chelsea Price et al.), investigated this and found that eating a whole avocado (minus the skin and stone) at night led to slightly lower triglyceride levels before breakfast and significantly lower levels three hours after breakfast, compared to a low-fat snack or a processed snack with similar fat and fiber.
This is important, because high triglyceride levels are linked to insulin resistance and increased heart disease risk in people with prediabetes; thus, lowering them generally supports metabolic and cardiovascular health, and in this case, helps mitigate diabetic or prediabetic symptoms.
However, it’s worth noting that:
- It was a small (n=27) study
- It was funded by the Avocado Nutrition Center
Now, we don’t know to what extent “Big Avocado” is (or isn’t) contributing to publication bias here, but it’s something to bear in mind.
Read in full: Nighttime avocado snack may support heart health in prediabetic adults
Take care!
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Professional-Style Dental Cleaning At Home?
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You know the scene: your dentist is rummaging around inside your mouth with an implement that looks like a medieval torture device; you wince at a sudden sharp pain, only to be told “if you flossed, you wouldn’t be bleeding now”.
For most of us, going to the dentist isn’t near the top of our “favorite things to do” list, but it is of course a necessity of (healthy) life.
So, what can we do to minimize suffering in the dentist’s chair?
First, the basics
Of course, good oral hygiene is the absolute baseline, but with so many choices out there, which is best? We examined an array of options in this three-part series:
- Toothpastes & Mouthwashes: Which Help And Which Harm?
- Flossing Without Flossing?
- Less Common Oral Hygiene Options ← we recommend the miswak! Not only does it clean the teeth as well as or better than traditional brushing, but also it changes the composition of saliva to improve the oral microbiome, effectively turning your saliva into a biological mouthwash that kills unwanted microbes and is comfortable for the ones that should be there.
In fact, caring for the composition of one’s saliva, and thus one’s oral microbiome, is so important that we did a main feature on that, a little later:
Make Your Saliva Better For Your Teeth ← this is especially important if you take any meds that affect the composition of your saliva (scroll down to the table of meds). Your medications’ leaflets won’t tell you that it does that directly, but they will list “dry mouth” as one of the potential side effects (and you’ll probably know if you have a medication that gives you a dry mouth).
Next, level up
For this one, we’ll drop some links to some videos we’ve featured (for those who prefer text, worry not, your faithful writer has added text-based overviews):
- How To Regrow Receding Gums
- Tooth Remineralization: How To Heal Your Teeth Naturally
- Tartar Removal At Home & How To Prevent Tartar
Now, that last one sounds slightly more exciting than it is—it is about using chemical processes to gradually lessen the tartar over time, with a six-month timeframe.
So, what if you want to do one better than that?
Finally… Buckle up, this one’s fun
Ok, so “fun” and “dental care” don’t usually go hand-in-hand, and maybe your sense of fun differs from this writer’s, but hey. The thing is, we’re going to get hands-on with dental tools.
Specifically, these dental tools:
👆 these are literally the tools this writer has; if you look in the specula (the round mirror bits), you can see the reflection of the fluffy gray bathrobe I was wearing when I took the picture!
You can get tools like these easily online; here’s an example product on Amazon; do also shop around of course, and we recommend checking the reviews to ensure good quality.
Writer’s story on why I have these: once upon a time, a wisdom tooth came through at 45°, ploughing through the molar next to it, which then needed removing.
However, my teeth have the interesting anatomical quirk that I have hooked/barbed roots, which does not make tooth extraction easy; it had to come out sidewise, and the process was somewhat bungled by an inexperienced dental surgeon.
When the anesthetic wore off, it was the most pain I’ve ever been in in my life.
After that, I wasn’t a very regular returner to the dentist, and in 2013, I fell into a very deep depression for unrelated reasons, and during that period, I got some plaque/tartar buildup on some of my teeth due to lack of care, that then just stayed until I decided to take care of it more recently, which I am happy to say, I’ve now done (my teeth are the happiest and healthiest they’ve ever been), and I’m going to share how, with you.
So, here’s how to do it… First, you’ll need those tools, of course.
You will also want a good quality backlit magnifying mirror. Again, here’s an example product on Amazon ← this is the exact kind this writer has, and it’s very good.
You may be thinking: “wait a minute, this is scary, those are dangerous and I’m not a dentist!”
If so, then a few quick things to bear in mind:
- If you’re not comfortable doing it, don’t do it. As ever, our medical/legal disclaimer applies, and we share information for your interest only, and not as an exhortation to take any particular action. By all means confer with your dentist, too, and see whether they support the idea.
- These things do look scarier than they are once you get used to them. Do you use metal silverware when eating? Technically you could stab yourself with a fork any time, or damage your teeth with it, but when was the last time you did that?
- With regard to manual dexterity, if you have the manual dexterity required to paint your nails, floss your teeth, sew by hand, or write with a pen, then you have the manual dexterity to do this, too.
Now, about the tools:
- Speculum / magnifying speculum: the one with the mirror. This is useful for looking at the backs of teeth.
- Tweezers: the one with the gold grip in the photo above. You probably won’t need to use these, but we’re sure you know how to use tweezers in general.
- Dental explorer: the one with the big wicked-looking hook on one end, and a tiny (almost invisible in the photo) hook on the other end. This is for examining cavities, not for manipulating things. Best leave that to your dentist if you have cavities.
- Dental pick: this is the one to the right of the dental explorer, and it is for cleaning in the crevices between teeth. One end is quite blunt; the other is pointier, and you can choose which end to use depending on what fits into the shape of the crevice between your teeth.
- Dental scraper: this is the one with chisel ends. One end curves very slightly to the left, the other, very slightly to the right. This is for ergonomics depending on which hand you’re using, and which side you’re scraping (you’ll become very aware that your teeth, even if they look straight, curve very slightly at the edges.
You’ll be using these last two for the actual tartar removal, selecting the tool appropriate to cleaning the flat surface of a tooth, or the crevice where the teeth meet (not like flossing! That part, yes, but under no circumstances is this thing going all the way through to the other side, it’s just for getting into to nook that the scraper can’t so easily clean, that’s all).
A word on using metal against your teeth: a scary prospect, initially! However…
While steel is indeed harder than the enamel of your teeth, the enamel of your teeth is much harder than the plaque/tartar/calculus that you will be removing. Therefore, the technique to use is very gently scrape, starting as gently as humanly possible until you get a feel for it.
Unlike the dentist, you will have an advantage here in that you have biofeedback, and bone conduction of the sounds in your mouth, so you can exercise much more restraint than your dentist can. With the correct minimum of pressure, the tool should glide smoothly down enamel, but when it’s scraping tartar, it should make a very fine sandpapery noise.
This is why “or write with a pen” was one of the skills we mentioned earlier; it’s the same thing; you don’t press with a pen so hard that it goes through the paper, so don’t press so hard with the tool that it damages your enamel, that’s all.
Because of the differential in hardness between the tartar and the enamel, it’s really very easy to remove the tartar without harming the enamel, provided one is gentle.
Final word of warning; we’ll repeat: If you’re not comfortable doing it, don’t do it. As ever, our medical/legal disclaimer applies, and we share information for your interest only, and not as an exhortation to take any particular action. By all means confer with your dentist, too, and see whether they support the idea.
Also, while this kind of cleaning can be done safely at home, we recommend against doing anything more complicated than that.
See for example: Can You Repair Your Own Teeth At Home? ← the short answer is “no”, or not beyond tooth remineralization, anyway, and kits that say otherwise are potentially misleading, or stop-gap solutions at best.
One last time: always consult with a professional and get their advice (ours is not advice; it’s just information).
Take care!
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Licorice, Digestion, & Hormones
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Let’s Take A Look At Licorice…
Licorice, as a confectionary, is mostly sugar and is useless for medicinal purposes.
Licorice (Glycyrrhiza sp., most often Glycyrrhiza glabra), in the form of either the root extract (which can be taken as a supplement, or used topically) or the whole root (which can be taken as a powder/capsule, or used to make tea), is a medicinal plant with a long history of use.
How well-evidenced is it for its popular uses?
Licorice for digestion
In this case, it is more accurate to say that it combats indigestion, including acid reflux and ulcerative colitis:
Systematic Review on Herbal Preparations for Controlling Visceral Hypersensitivity in Functional Gastrointestinal Disorders ← licorice was a top-tier performer in this review
Network pharmacology mechanisms and experimental verification of licorice in the treatment of ulcerative colitis ← looking at the mechanism of action; ultimately they concluded that “licorice improves ulcerative colitis, which may be related to the activation of the Nrf2/PINK1 signaling pathway that regulates autophagy.“
Licorice vs menopause symptoms
This one, while a popular use, isn’t so clear. Here’s a study that examines the compounds in licorice (in this case, Glycyrrhiza uralensis) that interact with estrogen receptors, notes that the bioavailability is poor, and proposes, tests, and recommends a way to make it more bioavailable:
On the other hand, it is established that it will lower serum testosterone levels, which may make it beneficial for menopause and/or PCOS:
Polycystic ovaries and herbal remedies: A systematic review
Licorice for men
You may be wondering: what about for men? Well, the jury is out on whether it meaningfully reduces free testosterone levels:
Licorice consumption and serum testosterone in healthy men
See also:
And finally, it may (notwithstanding its disputed effect on testosterone itself) be useful as a safer alternative to finasteride (an antiandrogen mostly commonly used to treat benign prostatic hyperplasia, also used to as a hair loss remedy), since it (like finasteride) modulates 5α-reductase activity (this enzyme converts testosterone to the more potent dihydrogen testosterone, DHT), without lowering sperm count:
Licorice for the skin
As well as its potentially estrogenic activity, its anti-inflammatory and antioxidant powers make it comparable to hydrocortisone cream for treating eczema, psoriasis, and other such skin conditions:
New Herbal Biomedicines for the Topical Treatment of Dermatological Disorders
Is it safe?
It is “generally recognized as safe”, as the classification goes.
However, consumed in excess it can cause/worsen hypertension, and other contraindications include if you’re on blood thinners, or have kidney problems.
As ever, this is a non-exhaustive list, so do speak with your doctor/pharmacist to be sure.
Want to try some?
We don’t sell it, but here for your convenience is an example product on Amazon
Enjoy!
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California Becomes Latest State To Try Capping Health Care Spending
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California’s Office of Health Care Affordability faces a herculean task in its plan to slow runaway health care spending.
The goal of the agency, established in 2022, is to make care more affordable and accessible while improving health outcomes, especially for the most disadvantaged state residents. That will require a sustained wrestling match with a sprawling, often dysfunctional health system and powerful industry players who have lots of experience fighting one another and the state.
Can the new agency get insurers, hospitals, and medical groups to collaborate on containing costs even as they jockey for position in the state’s $405 billion health care economy? Can the system be transformed so that financial rewards are tied more to providing quality care than to charging, often exorbitantly, for a seemingly limitless number of services and procedures?
The jury is out, and it could be for many years.
California is the ninth state — after Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Washington — to set annual health spending targets.
Massachusetts, which started annual spending targets in 2013, was the first state to do so. It’s the only one old enough to have a substantial pre-pandemic track record, and its results are mixed: The annual health spending increases were below the target in three of the first five years and dropped beneath the national average. But more recently, health spending has greatly increased.
In 2022, growth in health care expenditures exceeded Massachusetts’ target by a wide margin. The Health Policy Commission, the state agency established to oversee the spending control efforts, warned that “there are many alarming trends which, if unaddressed, will result in a health care system that is unaffordable.”
Neighboring Rhode Island, despite a preexisting policy of limiting hospital price increases, exceeded its overall health care spending growth target in 2019, the year it took effect. In 2020 and 2021, spending was largely skewed by the pandemic. In 2022, the spending increase came in at half the state’s target rate. Connecticut and Delaware, by contrast, both overshot their 2022 targets.
It’s all a work in progress, and California’s agency will, to some extent, be playing it by ear in the face of state policies and demographic realities that require more spending on health care.
And it will inevitably face pushback from the industry as it confronts unreasonably high prices, unnecessary medical treatments, overuse of high-cost care, administrative waste, and the inflationary concentration of a growing number of hospitals in a small number of hands.
“If you’re telling an industry we need to slow down spending growth, you’re telling them we need to slow down your revenue growth,” says Michael Bailit, president of Bailit Health, a Massachusetts-based consulting group, who has consulted for various states, including California. “And maybe that’s going to be heard as ‘we have to restrain your margins.’ These are very difficult conversations.”
Some of California’s most significant health care sectors have voiced disagreement with the fledgling affordability agency, even as they avoid overtly opposing its goals.
In April, when the affordability office was considering an annual per capita spending growth target of 3%, the California Hospital Association sent it a letter saying hospitals “stand ready to work with” the agency. But the proposed number was far too low, the association argued, because it failed to account for California’s aging population, new investments in Medi-Cal, and other cost pressures.
The hospital group suggested a spending increase target averaging 5.3% over five years, 2025-29. That’s slightly higher than the 5.2% average annual increase in per capita health spending over the five years from 2015 to 2020.
Five days after the hospital association sent its letter, the affordability board approved a slightly less aggressive target that starts at 3.5% in 2025 and drops to 3% by 2029. Carmela Coyle, the association’s chief executive, said in a statement that the board’s decision still failed to account for an aging population, the growing need for mental health and addiction treatment, and a labor shortage.
The California Medical Association, which represents the state’s doctors, expressed similar concerns. The new phased-in target, it said, was “less unreasonable” than the original plan, but the group would “continue to advocate against an artificially low spending target that will have real-life negative impacts on patient access and quality of care.”
But let’s give the state some credit here. The mission on which it is embarking is very ambitious, and it’s hard to argue with the motivation behind it: to interject some financial reason and provide relief for millions of Californians who forgo needed medical care or nix other important household expenses to afford it.
Sushmita Morris, a 38-year-old Pasadena resident, was shocked by a bill she received for an outpatient procedure last July at the University of Southern California’s Keck Hospital, following a miscarriage. The procedure lasted all of 30 minutes, Morris says, and when she received a bill from the doctor for slightly over $700, she paid it. But then a bill from the hospital arrived, totaling nearly $9,000, and her share was over $4,600.
Morris called the Keck billing office multiple times asking for an itemization of the charges but got nowhere. “I got a robotic answer, ‘You have a high-deductible plan,’” she says. “But I should still receive a bill within reason for what was done.” She has refused to pay that bill and expects to hear soon from a collection agency.
The road to more affordable health care will be long and chock-full of big challenges and unforeseen events that could alter the landscape and require considerable flexibility.
Some flexibility is built in. For one thing, the state cap on spending increases may not apply to health care institutions, industry segments, or geographic regions that can show their circumstances justify higher spending — for example, older, sicker patients or sharp increases in the cost of labor.
For those that exceed the limit without such justification, the first step will be a performance improvement plan. If that doesn’t work, at some point — yet to be determined — the affordability office can levy financial penalties up to the full amount by which an organization exceeds the target. But that is unlikely to happen until at least 2030, given the time lag of data collection, followed by conversations with those who exceed the target, and potential improvement plans.
In California, officials, consumer advocates, and health care experts say engagement among all the players, informed by robust and institution-specific data on cost trends, will yield greater transparency and, ultimately, accountability.
Richard Kronick, a public health professor at the University of California-San Diego and a member of the affordability board, notes there is scant public data about cost trends at specific health care institutions. However, “we will know that in the future,” he says, “and I think that knowing it and having that information in the public will put some pressure on those organizations.”
This article was produced by KFF Health News, which publishes California Healthline, an editorially independent service of the California Health Care Foundation.
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.
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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.
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Women and Minorities Bear the Brunt of Medical Misdiagnosis
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Charity Watkins sensed something was deeply wrong when she experienced exhaustion after her daughter was born.
At times, Watkins, then 30, had to stop on the stairway to catch her breath. Her obstetrician said postpartum depression likely caused the weakness and fatigue. When Watkins, who is Black, complained of a cough, her doctor blamed the flu.
About eight weeks after delivery, Watkins thought she was having a heart attack, and her husband took her to the emergency room. After a 5½-hour wait in a North Carolina hospital, she returned home to nurse her baby without seeing a doctor.
When a physician finally examined Watkins three days later, he immediately noticed her legs and stomach were swollen, a sign that her body was retaining fluid. After a chest X-ray, the doctor diagnosed her with heart failure, a serious condition in which the heart becomes too weak to adequately pump oxygen-rich blood to organs throughout the body. Watkins spent two weeks in intensive care.
She said a cardiologist later told her, “We almost lost you.”
Watkins is among 12 million adults misdiagnosed every year in the U.S.
In a study published Jan. 8 in JAMA Internal Medicine, researchers found that nearly 1 in 4 hospital patients who died or were transferred to intensive care had experienced a diagnostic error. Nearly 18% of misdiagnosed patients were harmed or died.
In all, an estimated 795,000 patients a year die or are permanently disabled because of misdiagnosis, according to a study published in July in the BMJ Quality & Safety periodical.
Some patients are at higher risk than others.
Women and racial and ethnic minorities are 20% to 30% more likely than white men to experience a misdiagnosis, said David Newman-Toker, a professor of neurology at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and the lead author of the BMJ study. “That’s significant and inexcusable,” he said.
Researchers call misdiagnosis an urgent public health problem. The study found that rates of misdiagnosis range from 1.5% of heart attacks to 17.5% of strokes and 22.5% of lung cancers.
Weakening of the heart muscle — which led to Watkins’ heart failure — is the most common cause of maternal death one week to one year after delivery, and is more common among Black women.
Heart failure “should have been No. 1 on the list of possible causes” for Watkins’ symptoms, said Ronald Wyatt, chief science and chief medical officer at the Society to Improve Diagnosis in Medicine, a nonprofit research and advocacy group.
Maternal mortality for Black mothers has increased dramatically in recent years. The United States has the highest maternal mortality rate among developed countries. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, non-Hispanic Black mothers are 2.6 times as likely to die as non-Hispanic white moms. More than half of these deaths take place within a year after delivery.
Research shows that Black women with childbirth-related heart failure are typically diagnosed later than white women, said Jennifer Lewey, co-director of the pregnancy and heart disease program at Penn Medicine. That can allow patients to further deteriorate, making Black women less likely to fully recover and more likely to suffer from weakened hearts for the rest of their lives.
Watkins said the diagnosis changed her life. Doctors advised her “not to have another baby, or I might need a heart transplant,” she said. Being deprived of the chance to have another child, she said, “was devastating.”
Racial and gender disparities are widespread.
Women and minority patients suffering from heart attacks are more likely than others to be discharged without diagnosis or treatment.
Black people with depression are more likely than others to be misdiagnosed with schizophrenia.
Minorities are less likely than whites to be diagnosed early with dementia, depriving them of the opportunities to receive treatments that work best in the early stages of the disease.
Misdiagnosis isn’t new. Doctors have used autopsy studies to estimate the percentage of patients who died with undiagnosed diseases for more than a century. Although those studies show some improvement over time, life-threatening mistakes remain all too common, despite an array of sophisticated diagnostic tools, said Hardeep Singh, a professor at Baylor College of Medicine who studies ways to improve diagnosis.
“The vast majority of diagnoses can be made by getting to know the patient’s story really well, asking follow-up questions, examining the patient, and ordering basic tests,” said Singh, who is also a researcher at Houston’s Michael E. DeBakey VA Medical Center. When talking to people who’ve been misdiagnosed, “one of the things we hear over and over is, ‘The doctor didn’t listen to me.’”
Racial disparities in misdiagnosis are sometimes explained by noting that minority patients are less likely to be insured than white patients and often lack access to high-quality hospitals. But the picture is more complicated, said Monika Goyal, an emergency physician at Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C., who has documented racial bias in children’s health care.
In a 2020 study, Goyal and her colleagues found that Black kids with appendicitis were less likely than their white peers to be correctly diagnosed, even when both groups of patients visited the same hospital.
Although few doctors deliberately discriminate against women or minorities, Goyal said, many are biased without realizing it.
“Racial bias is baked into our culture,” Goyal said. “It’s important for all of us to start recognizing that.”
Demanding schedules, which prevent doctors from spending as much time with patients as they’d like, can contribute to diagnostic errors, said Karen Lutfey Spencer, a professor of health and behavioral sciences at the University of Colorado-Denver. “Doctors are more likely to make biased decisions when they are busy and overworked,” Spencer said. “There are some really smart, well-intentioned providers who are getting chewed up in a system that’s very unforgiving.”
Doctors make better treatment decisions when they’re more confident of a diagnosis, Spencer said.
In an experiment, researchers asked doctors to view videos of actors pretending to be patients with heart disease or depression, make a diagnosis, and recommend follow-up actions. Doctors felt far more certain diagnosing white men than Black patients or younger women.
“If they were less certain, they were less likely to take action, such as ordering tests,” Spencer said. “If they were less certain, they might just wait to prescribe treatment.”
It’s easy to see why doctors are more confident when diagnosing white men, Spencer said. For more than a century, medical textbooks have illustrated diseases with stereotypical images of white men. Only 4.5% of images in general medical textbooks feature patients with dark skin.
That may help explain why patients with darker complexions are less likely to receive a timely diagnosis with conditions that affect the skin, from cancer to Lyme disease, which causes a red or pink rash in the earliest stage of infection. Black patients with Lyme disease are more likely to be diagnosed with more advanced disease, which can cause arthritis and damage the heart. Black people with melanoma are about three times as likely as whites to die within five years.
The covid-19 pandemic helped raise awareness that pulse oximeters — the fingertip devices used to measure a patient’s pulse and oxygen levels — are less accurate for people with dark skin. The devices work by shining light through the skin; their failures have delayed critical care for many Black patients.
Seven years after her misdiagnosis, Watkins is an assistant professor of social work at North Carolina Central University in Durham, where she studies the psychosocial effects experienced by Black mothers who survive severe childbirth complications.
“Sharing my story is part of my healing,” said Watkins, who speaks to medical groups to help doctors improve their care. “It has helped me reclaim power in my life, just to be able to help others.”
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.
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Papaya vs Plum – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing papaya to plum, we picked the papaya.
Why?
It was close in most categories!
In terms of macros, there’s nothing much between them; papaya has slightly more fiber, while carbs and protein are close enough to be within the margin of rounding errors. So, a marginal win for papaya, or a tie.
In the category of vitamins, papaya has more of vitamins A, B2, B5, B6, B7, B9, C, E, and choline, while plums have more of vitamins B1, B3, and K, giving this round to papaya.
Looking at minerals, papaya has more calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, potassium, and selenium, while plum has more copper, manganese, phosphorus, and zinc, making this a marginal 5:4 victory for papaya.
When it comes to other considerations, plum has some anticancer properties that papaya can’t boast, so that’s a point in plums’ favor.
Adding up the sections makes for an overall win for papaya, but by all means enjoy either or both, as diversity is good!
Want to learn more?
You might like:
Top 8 Fruits That Prevent & Kill Cancer
Enjoy!
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Kidney Beans vs White Beans – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing kidney beans to white beans, we picked the white.
Why?
It was close, and each has its strengths! Bear in mind, these are very closely-related beans. But there are distinguishing factors:
In terms of macros, kidney beans have very slightly more fiber and white beans have very slightly more protein. But both are close enough in both of those things to call this a tie in this category.
When it comes to vitamins, we will briefly break slightly from our usual methodology by noting that there are two ways of looking at this one:
- kidney beans have more of vitamins B1, B2, B3, B6, B9, C, and K, while white beans have more vitamin B5 and E
- kidney beans have slightly more of some vitamins that don’t usually see a deficiency, while white beans have 31x more vitamin E
For scoring purposes and in the interests of reproducibility, however, we will still stand by our usual method of noting that this is a 7:2 win for kidney beans in this category; we just wanted to note that in practical health terms, an argument can be made for white beans on the vitamin front too.
In the category of minerals, kidney beans have slightly more phosphorus, while white beans have more calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, potassium, selenium, and zinc. An easy win for white beans this time.
(In case you’re wondering about the margin on phosphorus, it was 0.2x more, so we’re not seeing a situation like white beans’ 31x more vitamin E)
Adding up the sections makes for a clear overall win for white means, and even more so if you want to use the alternate scoring consideration for vitamins, but either way, do enjoy either or both, as diversity is good!
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