
The Glucose Goddess Method – by Jessie Inchausspé
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We’ve previously reviewed Inchausspé’s excellent book “Glucose Revolution”. So what does this book add?
This book is for those who found that book a little dense. While this one still gives the same ten “hacks”, she focuses on the four that have the biggest effect, and walks the reader by the hand through a four-week programme of implementing them.
The claim of 100+ recipes is a little bold, as some of the recipes are things like vinegar, vinegar+water, vinegar+water but now we’re it’s in a restaurant, lemon+water, lemon+water but now it’s in a bottle, etc. However, there are legitimately a lot of actual recipes too.
Where this book’s greatest strength lies is in making everything super easy, and motivating. It’s a fine choice for being up-and-running quickly and easily without wading through the 300-odd pages of science in her previous book.
Bottom line: if you’ve already happily and sustainably implemented everything from her previous book, you can probably skip this one. However, if you’d like an easier method to implement the changes that have the biggest effect, then this is the book for you.
Click here to check out The Glucose Goddess Method, and build it into your life the easy way!
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How To Ease Neck Pain At Home
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Dr. Bang is offering exercises to alleviate neck pain, which pain can be a real… Well, if only there were a good phrase for expressing how troublesome pain in that part of the body can be.
To be clear, he’s a doctor of chiropractic, not a medical doctor, but his advice has clearly been helping people alleviate pain, so without further ado, he advises the following things:
- Taking the head and neck slowly and carefully through the full range of motion available
- Contracting the neck muscles while repeating the above exercise, three times each way
- Backing off a little if it hurts at any point, but noting where the limits lie
- Repeating again the range of motion exercise, this time adding gentle resistance
- Holding each end of this for twenty seconds before releasing and doing the other side, three times each way
- Finally, stabilizing the head centrally and pushing into one’s hands, as an isometric strengthening exercise
He demonstrates each part clearly in this short (5:58) video:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to know more about chiropractic?
You might like our previous main feature:
Is Chiropractic All It’s Cracked Up To Be?
Take care!
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Apples vs Oranges – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing apples to oranges, we picked the oranges.
Why?
In terms of macros, the two fruits are approximately equal (and indeed, on average, precisely equal in the most important metric, which is fiber). So, a tie here.
In the category of vitamins, apples are higher in vitamin K, while oranges are higher in vitamins A, B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, B7, B9, C, and choline. An easy win for oranges this time.
When it comes to minerals, apples have more iron and manganese, while oranges have more calcium, copper, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, and zinc. Another easy win for oranges.
So, adding up the sections, a clear win for oranges. But, by all means, enjoy either or both! Diversity is good.
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
From Apples to Bees, and High-Fructose Cs: Which Sugars Are Healthier, And Which Are Just The Same?
Take care!
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The Real Benefit Of Genetic Testing
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Genetic Testing: Health Benefits & Methods
Genetic testing is an oft-derided American pastime, but there’s a lot more to it than finding out about your ancestry!
Note: because there are relatively few companies offering health-related genetic testing services, and we are talking about the benefits of those services, some of this main feature may seem like an advert.
It’s not; none of those companies are sponsoring us, and if any of them become a sponsor at some point, we’ll make it clear and put it in the clearly-marked sponsor segment.
As ever, our only goal here is to provide science-backed information, to enable you to make your own, well-informed, decisions.
Health genomics & genetic testing
The basic goal of health genomics and genetic testing is to learn:
- What genetic conditions you have
- Clearcut genetic conditions, such as Fragile X syndrome, or Huntington’s disease
- What genetic predispositions you have
- Such as an increased/decreased risk for various kinds of cancer, diabetes, heart conditions, and so forth
- What genetic traits you have
- These may range from “blue eyes” to “superathlete muscle type”
- More specifically, pharmacogenomic information
- For example, “fast caffeine metabolizer” or “clopidogrel (Plavix) non-responder” (i.e., that drug simply will not work for you)
Wait, what’s the difference between health genomics and genetic testing?
- Health genomics is the science of how our genes affect our health.
- Genetic testing can be broadly defined as the means of finding out which genes we have.
A quick snippet…
More specifically, a lot of these services look at which single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs, pronounced “snips”) we have. While we share almost all of our DNA with each other (and indeed, with most vertebrates), our polymorphisms are the bits that differ, and are the bits that, genetically speaking, make us different.
So, by looking just at the SNPs, it means we “only” need to look at about 3,000,000 DNA positions, and not our entire genome. For perspective, those 3,000,000 DNA positions make up about 0.1% of our whole genome, so without focusing on SNPs, the task would be 1000x harder.
For example, the kind of information that this sort of testing may give you, includes (to look at some “popular” SNPs):
- rs53576 in the oxytocin receptor influences social behavior and personality
- rs7412 and rs429358 can raise the risk of Alzheimer’s disease by more than 10x
- rs6152 can influence baldness
- rs333 resistance to HIV
- rs1800497 in a dopamine receptor may influence the sense of pleasure
- rs1805007 determines red hair and sensitivity to anesthetics
- rs9939609 triggers obesity and type-2 diabetes
- rs662799 prevents weight gain from high fat diets
- rs12255372 linked to type-2 diabetes and breast cancer
- rs1799971 makes alcohol cravings stronger
- rs17822931 determines earwax, sweating and body odor
- rs1333049 coronary heart disease
- rs1051730 and rs3750344 nicotine dependence
- rs4988235 lactose intolerance
(You can learn about these and more than 100,000 other SNPs at SNPedia.com)
I don’t know what SNPs I have, and am disinclined to look them up one by one!
The first step to knowing, is to get your DNA out of your body and into a genetic testing service. This is usually done by saliva or blood sample. This writer got hers done many years ago by 23andMe and was very happy with that service, but there are plenty of other options.
Healthline did an independent review of the most popular companies, so you might like to check out:
Healthline: Best DNA Testing Kits of 2023
Those companies will give you some basic information, such as “6x higher breast cancer risk” or “3x lower age-related macular degeneration risk” etc.
However, to really get bang-for-buck, what you want to do next is:
- Get your raw genetic data (the companies above should provide it); this will probably look like a big text file full of As, Cs, Gs, and Ts, but it make take another form.
- Upload it to Promethease. When this writer got hers done , the cost was $2; that price has now gone up to a whopping $12.
- You will then get a report that will cross-reference your data with everything known about SNPs, and give a supremely comprehensive, readable-to-the-human-eye, explanation of what it all means for you—from much more specific health risk prognostics, to more trivial things like whether you can roll your tongue or smell decomposed asparagus metabolites in urine.
A note on privacy: anything you upload to Promethease will be anonymized, and/but in doing so, you consent to it going into the grand scientific open-source bank of “things we know about the human genome”, and thus contribute to the overall sample size of genetic data.
In our opinion, it means you’re doing your bit for science, without personal risk. But your opinion may differ, and that’s your decision to make.
Lastly, on the pros and cons of pharmacogenetic testing specifically:
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- What genetic conditions you have
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Fasting Cancer – by Dr. Valter Longo
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We’ve previously reviewed Dr. Longo’s “The Longevity Diet”, and whereas that one was about eating, this one is (superficially, at least) about not eating. Nor is this any kind of dissonance, because, in fact, it’s important to do both!
That said, he discusses not just fasting per se, but also the use of a personalized fast-mimicking diet, to accomplish the same goal of not overloading the metabolism—as overloading the metabolism results in metabolic disease, and cancer is, ultimately, a metabolic disease of immune dysfunction with genetic disorder*—which makes for quite a deadly trifecta.
*not in the sense of “hereditary”, though certainly genes can influence cancer risk, but rather, in the sense of “your gene-copying process becomes disordered”.
The first three chapters (after the introduction, which we’ll comment on shortly) are devoted to explaining the principles at hand:
- Fasting cancer while feeding patients
- Genes, aging, and cancer
- Fasting, nutrition, and physical activity in cancer prevention
In those chapters, he details a lot of the science for exactly how and why it is possible to “feed the patient and starve the cancer” at the same time.
After that, the rest of the book—another nine chapters, not counting appendices etc—are given over to fasting and nutrition in the context of nine main types of cancer, one chapter per type. These are not hyperspecific, though, and are rather categorizations, such as “blood cancers”, and “gynecological cancers” and so forth. It’s comprehensive, and while it could be argued that it may mean chapters feel irrelevant to some people (à la “I have never smoked and have no pressing concern about my lung cancer risk” etc), the reality is that it’s good to know how to avoid them all, because if nothing else, it’d be super embarrassing to get a cancer you “thought you couldn’t get”. So, it’s honestly worth the time to read each chapter.
In the category of criticism, he did open the introduction with a handful of anecdotes to defend the consumption of (well-established group 1 carcinogens) red meat and alcohol as “secondary concerns that might not be such a big deal”, even discussing how surprised his colleagues in the field are that he has this view. Suffice it to say, it’s contrary to the overwhelming body of evidence, and reads suspiciously like a man who simply doesn’t want to give up his steak and wine despite his own longevity diet forswearing them.
The style is self-indulgently autobiographical and very complimentary, and (in this reviewer’s opinion) it can be tedious to wade through that to get to the science, but at the end of the day, his self-accolades might be needless fluff, but they don’t actually remove anything from the science in question.
Bottom line: as you can see, there are good and bad things to say about this book, but the information contained in the good makes it well worth reading through the stylistically questionable to get it.
Click here to check out Fasting Cancer, and starve cancer cells while nourishing your healthy ones!
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Lose Weight (Healthily!)
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What Do You Have To Lose?
For something that’s a very commonly sought-after thing, we’ve not yet done a main feature specifically about how to lose weight, so we’re going to do that today, and make it part of a three-part series about changing one’s weight:
- Losing weight (specifically, losing fat)
- Gaining weight (specifically, gaining muscle)
- Gaining weight (specifically, gaining fat)
And yes, that last one is something that some people want/need to do (healthily!), and want/need help with that.
There will be, however, no need for a “losing muscle” article, because (even though sometimes a person might have some reason to want to do this), it’s really just a case of “those things we said for gaining muscle? Don’t do those and the muscle will atrophy naturally”.
One reason we’ve not covered this before is because the association between weight loss and good health is not nearly so strong as the weight loss industry would have you believe:
And, while BMI is not a useful measure of health in general, it’s worth noting that over the age of 65, a BMI of 27 (which is in the high end of “overweight”, without being obese) is associated with the lowest all-cause mortality:
BMI and all-cause mortality in older adults: a meta-analysis
Important: the above does mean that for very many of our readers, weight loss would not actually be healthy.
Today’s article is intended as a guide only for those who are sure that weight loss is the correct path forward. If in doubt, please talk to your doctor.
With that in mind…
Start in the kitchen
You will not be able to exercise well if your body is malnourished.
Counterintuitively, malnourishment and obesity often go hand-in-hand, partly for this reason.
Important: it’s not the calories in your food; it’s the food in your calories
See also: Mythbusting Calories
The kind of diet that most readily produces unhealthy overweight, the diet that nutritional scientists often call the “Standard American Diet”, or “SAD” for short, is high on calories but low on nutrients.
So you will want to flip this, and focus on enjoying nutrient-dense whole foods.
The Mediterranean Diet is the current “gold standard” in this regard, so for your interest we offer:
Four Ways To Upgrade The Mediterranean Diet
And since you may be wondering:
Should You Go Light Or Heavy On Carbs?
The dining room is the next most important place
Many people do not appreciate food enough for good health. The trick here is, having prepared a nice meal, to actually take the time to enjoy it.
It can be tempting when hungry (or just plain busy) to want to wolf down dinner in 47 seconds, but that is the metabolic equivalent of “oh no, our campfire needs more fuel, let’s spray it with a gallon of gasoline”.
To counter this, here’s the very good advice of Dr. Rupy Aujla, “The Kitchen Doctor”:
Interoception & Mindful Eating
The bedroom is important too
You snooze, you lose… Visceral belly fat, anyway! We’ve talked before about how waist circumference is a better indicator of metabolic health than BMI, and in our article about trimming that down, we covered how good sleep is critical for one’s waistline:
Visceral Belly Fat & How To Lose It
Exercise, yes! But in one important way.
There are various types of exercise that are good for various kinds of health, but there’s only one type of exercise that is good for boosting one’s metabolism.
Whereas most kinds of exercise will raise one’s metabolism while exercising, and then lower it afterwards (to below its previous metabolic base rate!) to compensate, high-intensity interval training (HIIT) will raise your metabolism while training, and for two hours afterwards:
…which means that unlike most kinds of exercise, HIIT actually works for fat loss:
So if you’d like to take up HIIT, here’s how:
How (And Why) To Do HIIT (Without Wrecking Your Body)
Want more?
Check out our previous article about specifically how to…
Burn! How To Boost Your Metabolism
Take care!
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Broccoli vs Cabbage – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing broccoli to cabbage, we picked the broccoli.
Why?
Here we go once again pitting two different cultivars of the same species (Brassica oleracea) against each other, and/but once again, there is one that comes out as nutritionally best.
In terms of macros, broccoli has more protein, carbs, and fiber, while they are both low glycemic index foods. The differences are small though, so it’s fairest to call this category a tie.
When it comes to vitamins, broccoli has more of vitamins A, B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, B7, B9, C, E, K, and choline, while cabbage is not higher in any vitamins. It should be noted that cabbage is still good for these, especially vitamins C and K, but broccoli is simply better.
In the category of minerals, broccoli has more calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, and zinc, while cabbage is not higher in any minerals. Again though, cabbage is still good, especially in calcium, iron, and manganese, but again, broccoli is simply better.
Of course, enjoy either or both! But if you want the nutritionally densest option, it’s broccoli.
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
What’s Your Plant Diversity Score?
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
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