The Dopa-Bean
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Mucuna pruriens, also called the “magic velvet bean”, is an established herbal drug used for the management of male infertility, nervous disorders, and also as an aphrodisiac:
The Magic Velvet Bean of Mucuna pruriens
How it works is more interesting than that, though.
It’s about the dopamine
M. pruriens contains levodopa (L-dopa). That’s right, the same as the dopaminergic medication most often prescribed for Parkinson’s disease. Furthermore, it might even be better than synthetic L-dopa, because:
❝M. pruriens seed extract demonstrated acetylcholinesterase inhibitory activity, while synthetic L-dopa enhanced the activity of the enzyme. It can be concluded that the administration of M. pruriens seed might be effective in protecting the brain against neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases.
M. pruriens seed extract containing L-dopa has shown less acetylcholinesterase activity stimulation compared with L-dopa, suggesting that the extract might have a superior benefit for use in the treatment of Parkinson’s disease.❞
~ Dr. Narisa Kamkaen et al.
Indeed, it has been tested specifically in (human!) Parkinson’s disease patients, which RCT found:
❝The rapid onset of action and longer on time without concomitant increase in dyskinesias on mucuna seed powder formulation suggest that this natural source of l-dopa might possess advantages over conventional l-dopa preparations in the long term management of Parkinson’s disease❞
~ Dr. Regina Katzenschlager et al.
Read more: Mucuna pruriens in Parkinson’s disease: a double-blind clinical and pharmacological study
Beyond Parkinson’s disease
M. pruriens has also been tested and found beneficial in cases of disease other than Parkinson’s, thus:
Mucuna pruriens in Parkinson’s and in some other diseases: recent advancement and future prospective
…but the science is less well-established for things not generally considered related to dopamine, such as cancer, diabetes, and cardiometabolic disorders.
Note, however, that the science for it being neuroprotective is rather stronger.
Against depression
Depression can have many causes, and (especially on a neurological level) diverse presentations. As such, sometimes what works for one person’s depression won’t touch another person’s, because the disease and treatment are about completely different neurotransmitter dysregulations. So, if a person’s depression is due to a shortage of serotonin, for example, then perking up the dopamine won’t help much, and vice versa. See also:
Antidepressants: Personalization Is Key!
When it comes to M. pruriens and antidepressant activity, then predictably it will be more likely to help if your depression is due to too little dopamine. Note that this means that even if your depression is dopamine-based, but the problem is with your dopamine receptors and not the actual levels of dopamine, then this may not help so much, depending on what else you have going on in there.
The science for M. pruriens and depression is young, and we only found non-human animal studies so far, for example:
In summary
It’s good against Parkinson’s in particular and is good against neurodegeneration in general.
It may be good against depression, depending on the kind of depression you have.
Is it safe?
That’s a great question! And the answer is: it depends. For most people, in moderation, it should be fine (but, see our usual legal/medical disclaimer). Definitely don’t take it if you have bipolar disorder or any kind of schizoid/psychotic disorder; it is likely to trigger a manic/psychotic episode if you do.
For more on this, we discussed it (pertaining to L-dopa in general, not M. pruriens specifically) at greater length here:
An Accessible New Development Against Alzheimer’s ← scroll down to the heading that reads “Is there a catch?”
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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Take Care Of Your “Unwanted” Parts Too!
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Meet The Family…
If you’ve heard talk of “healing your inner child” or similar ideas, then today’s featured type of therapy takes that to several extra levels, in a way that helps many people.
It’s called Internal Family Systems therapy, often “IFS” for short.
Here’s a quick overview:
Psychology Today | Internal Family Systems Therapy
Note: if you are delusional, paranoid, schizophrenic, or have some other related disorder*, then IFS would probably be a bad idea for you as it could worsen your symptoms, and/or play into them badly.
*but bipolar disorder, in its various forms, is not usually a problem for IFS. Do check with your own relevant healthcare provider(s), of course, to be sure.
What is IFS?
The main premise of IFS is that your “self” can be modelled as a system, and its constituent parts can be examined, questioned, given what they need, and integrated into a healthy whole.
For example…
- Exile is the name given to parts that could be, for example, the “inner child” referenced in a lot of pop-psychology, but it could also be some other ignored and pushed-down part of oneself, often from some kind of trauma. The defining characteristic of an exile is that it’s a part of ourself that we don’t consciously allow ourselves to see as a current part of ourself.
- Protector is the name given to a part of us that looks to keep us safe, and can do this in an adaptive (healthy) or maladaptive (unhealthy) way, for example:
- Firefighter is the name given to a part of us that will do whatever is necessary in the moment to deal with an exile that is otherwise coming to the surface—sometimes with drastic actions/reactions that may not be great for us.
- Manager is the name given to a part of us that has a more nurturing protective role, keeping us from harm in what’s often a more prophylactic manner.
To give a simple illustration…
A person was criticized a lot as a child, told she was useless, and treated as a disappointment. Consequently, as an adult she now has an exile “the useless child”, something she strives to leave well behind in her past, because it was a painful experience for her. However, sometimes when someone questions and/or advises her, she will get defensive as her firefighter “the hero” will vigorously speak up for her competence, like nobody did when she was a child. This vigor, however, manifests as rude abrasiveness and overcompensation. Finally, she has a manager, “the advocate”, who will do the same job, but in a more quietly confident fashion.
This person’s therapy will look at transferring the protector job from the firefighter to the manager, which will involve examining, questioning, and addressing all three parts.
The above example is fictional and created for simplicity and clarity; here’s a real-world case study if you’d like a more in-depth overview of how it can work:
How it all fits together in practice
IFS looks to make sure all the parts’ needs are met, even the “bad” ones, because they all have their functions.
Good IFS therapy, however, can make sure a part is heard, and then reassure that part in a way that effectively allows that part to “retire”, safe and secure in the knowledge that it has done what it needed to, and/or the job is being done by another part now.
That can involve, for example, thanking the firefighter for looking after our exile for all these years, but that our exile is safe and in good hands now, so it can put that fire-axe away.
See also: On Being Reactive vs Being Responsive
Questions you might ask yourself
While IFS therapy is best given by a skilled practitioner, we can take some of the ideas of it for self-therapy too. For example…
- What is a secret about yourself that you will take to the grave? And now, why did that part of you (now an exile) come to exist?
- What does that exile need, that it didn’t get? What parts of us try to give it that nowadays?
- What could we do, with all that information in mind, to assign the “protection” job to the part of us best-suited to healthy integration?
Want to know more?
We’ve only had the space of a small article to give a brief introduction to Family Systems therapy, so check out the “resources” tab at:
IFS Institute | What Is Internal Family Systems Therapy?
Take care!
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Why Do We Have Pores, And Could We Not?
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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
❝Do we really need pores, and why are they bigger on the face?❞
Pores secrete sweat or sebum (there are different kinds of pores for each).
If we didn’t have sweat pores, we’d be unable to sweat, which superficially may seem like a bonus, but it’d make us prone to overheating (like dogs, pigs, and other mammals that cannot sweat).
If we didn’t have sebum pores (usually called hair follicles, which are supplied by a sebaceous gland), we’d be completely hairless, and also unable to supply our skin with natural oils that keep it healthy. So we’d have no hair and very unhappy skin.
Which is ironic, because to believe beauty magazines, we must at all costs minimize our pores (and indeed, interventions like botox* can kill them).
*Let’s give that its full name though:
Suffice it to say, we do not recommend getting injected with neurotoxins unless it is truly necessary to ward off a greater harm.
As for being bigger on the face, they need not be, but sebaceous glands are more active and numerous there, being most active and numerous in the face/forehead—which is why oily skin is more likely to appear there than other parts of the body.
If your facial sebaceous glands are too active for your liking…
…there are ways to reduce that, a simple and relatively gentle way (relative, for example, botox) is with retinoids, including retinols or retinoic acids. Here’s some of the science of that; the paper is about treating acne, but the mechanism of action is the same (down-regulating the sebaceous glands’ action):
The potential side-effects, however were noted as:
- Cheilitis
- Desquamation of the skin
- Pruritus
Which, in translation from sciencese, means:
- Chapped lips
- Flaky skin
- Itchiness
Which aren’t necessarily fun, which is why with retinoids are best taken in very small doses at first to see how your skin reacts.
Remember when we said what your skin would be like without pores? This is what would happen, only much worse.
Take care!
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How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci – by Michael J. Gelb
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Authors often try to bring forward the best minds of the distant past, and apply them to today’s world. One could fill a library with business advice adaptations from Sun Tzu’s Art of War alone, same goes for Miyamoto Musashi’s Book of Five Rings, and let’s not get started on Niccolò Machiavelli. What makes this book different?
Michael Gelb explores the principles codified and used by the infamous Renaissance Man to do exactly what he did: pretty much everything. Miyamoto Musashi had no interest in business, but Leonardo da Vinci really did care a lot about learning, creating, problem-solving, human connections, and much more. And best of all, he took notes. So many notes, for himself, of which we now enjoy the benefit.
How To Think Like Leonardo da Vinci explores these notes and their application by the man himself, and gives real, practical examples of how you can (and why you should) put them into action in your daily life, no matter whether you are a big business CEO or a local line cook or a reclusive academic, Leonardo has lessons for you.
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Coca-Cola vs Diet Coke – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing Coca-Cola to Diet Coke, we picked the Diet Coke.
Why?
While the Diet Coke is bad, the Coca-Cola has mostly the same problems plus sugar.
The sugar in a can of Coca-Cola is 39g high-fructose corn syrup (the worst kind of sugar yet known to humanity), and of course it’s being delivered in liquid form (the most bioavailable way to get, which in this case, is bad).
To put those 39g into perspective, the daily recommended amount of sugar is 36g for men or 25g for women, according to the AHA.
The sweetener in Diet Coke is aspartame, which has had a lot of health risk accusations made against it, most of which have not stood up to scrutiny, and the main risk it does have is “it mimics sugar too well” and it can increase cravings for sweetness, and therefore higher consumption of sugars in other products. For this reason, the World Health Organization has recommended to simply reduce sugar intake without looking to artificial sweeteners to help.
Nevertheless, aspartame has been found safe (in moderate doses; the upper tolerance level would equate to more than 20 cans of diet coke per day) by food safety agencies ranging from the FDA to the EFSA, based on a large body of science.
Other problems that Diet Coke has are present in Coca-Cola too, such as its acidic nature (bad for tooth enamel) and gassy nature (messes with leptin/ghrelin balance).
Summary: the Diet Coke is relatively less unhealthy, but is still bad in numerous ways, and remains best avoided.
Read more:
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Mythbusting The Mask Debate
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Mythbusting The Mask Debate
We asked you for your mask policy this respiratory virus season, and got the above-depicted, below-described, set of responses:
- A little under half of you said you will be masking when practical in indoor public places
- A little over a fifth of you said you will mask only if you have respiratory virus symptoms
- A little under a fifth of you said that you will not mask, because you don’t think it helps
- A much smaller minority of you (7%) said you will go with whatever people around you are doing
- An equally small minority of you said that you will not mask, because you’re not concerned about infections
So, what does the science say?
Wearing a mask reduces the transmission of respiratory viruses: True or False?
True…with limitations. The limitations include:
- The type of mask
- A homemade polyester single-sheet is not the same as an N95 respirator, for instance
- How well it is fitted
- It needs to be a physical barrier, so a loose-fitting “going through the motions” fit won’t help
- The condition of the mask
- And if applicable, the replaceable filter in the mask
- What exactly it has to stop
- What kind of virus, what kind of viral load, what kind of environment, is someone coughing/sneezing, etc
More details on these things can be found in the link at the end of today’s main feature, as it’s more than we could fit here!
Note: We’re talking about respiratory viruses in general in this main feature, but most extant up-to-date research is on COVID, so that’s going to appear quite a lot. Remember though, even COVID is not one beast, but many different variants, each with their own properties.
Nevertheless, the scientific consensus is “it does help, but is not a magical amulet”:
- 2021: Effectiveness of Face Masks in Reducing the Spread of COVID-19: A Model-Based Analysis
- 2022: Why Masks are Important during COVID‐19 Pandemic
- 2023: The mitigating effect of masks on the spread of COVID-19
Wearing a mask is actually unhygienic: True or False?
False, assuming your mask is clean when you put it on.
This (the fear of breathing more of one’s own germs in a cyclic fashion) was a point raised by some of those who expressed mask-unfavorable views in response to our poll.
There have been studies testing this, and they mostly say the same thing, “if it’s clean when you put it on, great, if not, then well yes, that can be a problem”:
❝A longer mask usage significantly increased the fungal colony numbers but not the bacterial colony numbers.
Although most identified microbes were non-pathogenic in humans; Staphylococcus epidermidis, Staphylococcus aureus, and Cladosporium, we found several pathogenic microbes; Bacillus cereus, Staphylococcus saprophyticus, Aspergillus, and Microsporum.
We also found no associations of mask-attached microbes with the transportation methods or gargling.
We propose that immunocompromised people should avoid repeated use of masks to prevent microbial infection.❞
Source: Bacterial and fungal isolation from face masks under the COVID-19 pandemic
Wearing a mask can mean we don’t get enough oxygen: True or False?
False, for any masks made-for-purpose (i.e., are by default “breathable”), under normal conditions:
- COVID‐19 pandemic: do surgical masks impact respiratory nasal functions?
- Performance Comparison of Single and Double Masks: Filtration Efficiencies, Breathing Resistance and CO2 Content
However, wearing a mask while engaging in strenuous best-effort cardiovascular exercise, will reduce VO₂max. To be clear, you will still have more than enough oxygen to function; it’s not considered a health hazard. However, it will reduce peak athletic performance:
…so if you are worrying about whether the mask will impede you breathing, ask yourself: am I engaging in an activity that requires my peak athletic performance?
Also: don’t let it get soaked with water, because…
Writer’s anecdote as an additional caveat: in the earliest days of the COVID pandemic, I had a simple cloth mask on, the one-piece polyester kind that we later learned quite useless. The fit wasn’t perfect either, but one day I was caught in heavy rain (I had left it on while going from one store to another while shopping), and suddenly, it fitted perfectly, as being soaked through caused it to cling beautifully to my face.
However, I was now effectively being waterboarded. I will say, it was not pleasant, but also I did not die. I did buy a new mask in the next store, though.
tl;dr = an exception to “no it won’t impede your breathing” is that a mask may indeed impede your breathing if it is made of cloth and literally soaked with water; that is how waterboarding works!
Want up-to-date information?
Most of the studies we cited today were from 2022 or 2023, but you can get up-to-date information and guidance from the World Health Organization, who really do not have any agenda besides actual world health, here:
Coronavirus disease (COVID-19): Masks | Frequently Asked Questions
At the time of writing this newsletter, the above information was last updated yesterday.
Take care!
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The Truth About Vaccines
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The Truth About Vaccines
Yesterday we asked your views on vaccines, and we got an interesting spread of answers. Of those who responded to the poll, most were in favour of vaccines. We got quite a lot of comments this time too; we can’t feature them all, but we’ll include extracts from a few in our article today, as they raised interesting points!
Vaccines contain dangerous ingredients that will harm us more than the disease would: True or False?
False, contextually.
Many people are very understandably wary of things they know full well to be toxic, being injected into them.
One subscriber who voted for “Vaccines are poison, and/or are some manner of conspiracy ” wrote:
❝I think vaccines from 50–60 years ago are true vaccines and were safer than vaccines today. I have not had a vaccine for many, many years, and I never plan to have any kind of vaccine/shot again.❞
They didn’t say why they personally felt this way, but the notion that “things were simpler back in the day” is a common (and often correct!) observation regards health, especially when it comes to unwanted additives and ultraprocessing of food.
Things like aluminum or mercury in vaccines are much like sodium and chlorine in table salt. Sodium and chlorine are indeed both toxic to us. But in the form of sodium chloride, it’s a normal part of our diet, provided we don’t overdo it.
Additionally, the amount of unwanted metals (e.g. aluminum, mercury) in vaccines is orders of magnitude smaller than the amount in dietary sources—even if you’re a baby and your “dietary sources” are breast milk and/or formula milk.
In the case of formaldehyde (an inactivating agent), it’s also the dose that makes the poison (and the quantity in vaccines is truly miniscule).
This academic paper alone cites more sources than we could here without making today’s newsletter longer than it already is:
Vaccine Safety: Myths and Misinformation
I have a perfectly good immune system, it can handle the disease: True or False?
True! Contingently.
In fact, our immune system is so good at defending against disease, that the best thing we can do to protect ourselves is show our immune system a dead or deactivated version of a pathogen, so that when the real pathogen comes along, our immune system knows exactly what it is and what to do about it.
In other words, a vaccine.
One subscriber who voted for “Vaccines are important but in some cases the side effects can be worse ” wrote:
❝In some ways I’m vacd out. I got COVid a few months ago and had no symptoms except a cough. I have asthma and it didn’t trigger a lot of congestion. No issues. I am fully vaccinated but not sure I’ll get one in fall.❞
We’re glad this subscriber didn’t get too ill! A testimony to their robust immune system doing what it’s supposed to, after being shown a recent-ish edition of the pathogen, in deactivated form.
It’s very reasonable to start wondering: “surely I’m vaccinated enough by now”
And, hopefully, you are! But, as any given pathogen mutates over time, we eventually need to show our immune system what the new version looks like, or else it won’t recognize it.
See also: Why Experts Think You’ll Need a COVID-19 Booster Shot in the Future
So why don’t we need booster shots for everything? Often, it’s because a pathogen has stopped mutating at any meaningful rate. Polio is an example of this—no booster is needed for most people in most places.
Others, like flu, require annual boosters to keep up with the pathogens.
Herd immunity will keep us safe: True or False?
True! Ish.
But it doesn’t mean what a lot of people think it means. For example, in the UK, “herd immunity” was the strategy promoted by Prime Minister of the hour, Boris Johnson. But he misunderstood what it meant:
- What he thought it meant: everyone gets the disease, then everyone who doesn’t die is now immune
- What it actually means: if most people are immune to the disease (for example: due to having been vaccinated), it can’t easily get to the people who aren’t immune
One subscriber who voted for “Vaccines are critical for our health; vax to the max! ” wrote:
❝I had a chiropractor a few years ago, who explained to me that if the general public took vaccines, then she would not have to vaccinate her children and take a risk of having side effects❞
Obviously, we can’t speak for this subscriber’s chiropractor’s children, but this raises a good example: some people can’t safely have a given vaccine, due to underlying medical conditions—or perhaps it is not available to them, for example if they are under a certain age.
In such cases, herd immunity—other people around having been vaccinated and thus not passing on the disease—is what will keep them safe.
Here’s a useful guide from the US Dept of Health and Human Services:
How does community immunity (a.k.a. herd immunity) work?
And, for those who are more visually inclined, here’s a graphical representation of a mathematical model of how herd immunity works (you can run a simulation)!
Stay safe!
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