The Spice Of Life

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It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!

Have a question or a request? You can always hit “reply” to any of our emails, or use the feedback widget at the bottom!

In cases where we’ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future too—there’s always more to say!

As ever: if the question/request can be answered briefly, we’ll do it here in our Q&A Thursday edition. If not, we’ll make a main feature of it shortly afterwards!

So, no question/request too big or small

❝Great newsletter. Am taking turmeric for inflammation of hips and feet. Works like magic. Would like to know how it works, and what tumeric is best combined with – also whether there any risks in longterm use.❞

Glad you’re enjoying! As for turmeric, it sure is great, isn’t it? To answer your questions in a brief fashion:

  • How it works: it does a lot of things, but perhaps its most key feature is its autoxidative metabolites that mediate its anti-inflammatory effect. Thus, it slows or inhibits oxidative stress that would otherwise cause inflammation, increase cancer risk, and advance aging.
  • Best combined with: black pepper
  • Any risks in long-term use: there are no known risks in long-term use ← that’s just one study, but there are lots. Some studies were prompted by reported hepatotoxicity of curcumin supplements, but a) the reports themselves seem to be without evidence b) the reported hepatoxicity was in relation to contaminants in the supplements, not the curcumin itself c) clinical trials were unable to find any hepatotoxicity (or other) risks anyway. Here’s an example of such a study.

You might also like our previous main feature: Why Curcumin (Turmeric) Is Worth Its Weight In Gold

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  • Most adults will gain half a kilo this year – and every year. Here’s how to stop ‘weight creep’

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

    As we enter a new year armed with resolutions to improve our lives, there’s a good chance we’ll also be carrying something less helpful: extra kilos. At least half a kilogram, to be precise.

    “Weight creep” doesn’t have to be inevitable. Here’s what’s behind this sneaky annual occurrence and some practical steps to prevent it.

    Allgo/Unsplash

    Small gains add up

    Adults tend to gain weight progressively as they age and typically gain an average of 0.5 to 1kg every year.

    While this doesn’t seem like much each year, it amounts to 5kg over a decade. The slow-but-steady nature of weight creep is why many of us won’t notice the extra weight gained until we’re in our fifties.

    Why do we gain weight?

    Subtle, gradual lifestyle shifts as we progress through life and age-related biological changes cause us to gain weight. Our:

    • activity levels decline. Longer work hours and family commitments can see us become more sedentary and have less time for exercise, which means we burn fewer calories
    • diets worsen. With frenetic work and family schedules, we sometimes turn to pre-packaged and fast foods. These processed and discretionary foods are loaded with hidden sugars, salts and unhealthy fats. A better financial position later in life can also result in more dining out, which is associated with a higher total energy intake
    • sleep decreases. Busy lives and screen use can mean we don’t get enough sleep. This disturbs our body’s energy balance, increasing our feelings of hunger, triggering cravings and decreasing our energy
    Woman sleeps
    Insufficient sleep can increase our appetite. Craig Adderley/Pexels
    • stress increases. Financial, relationship and work-related stress increases our body’s production of cortisol, triggering food cravings and promoting fat storage
    • metabolism slows. Around the age of 40, our muscle mass naturally declines, and our body fat starts increasing. Muscle mass helps determine our metabolic rate, so when our muscle mass decreases, our bodies start to burn fewer calories at rest.

    We also tend to gain a small amount of weight during festive periods – times filled with calorie-rich foods and drinks, when exercise and sleep are often overlooked. One study of Australian adults found participants gained 0.5 kilograms on average over the Christmas/New Year period and an average of 0.25 kilograms around Easter.

    Why we need to prevent weight creep

    It’s important to prevent weight creep for two key reasons:

    1. Weight creep resets our body’s set point

    Set-point theory suggests we each have a predetermined weight or set point. Our body works to keep our weight around this set point, adjusting our biological systems to regulate how much we eat, how we store fat and expend energy.

    When we gain weight, our set point resets to the new, higher weight. Our body adapts to protect this new weight, making it challenging to lose the weight we’ve gained.

    But it’s also possible to lower your set point if you lose weight gradually and with an interval weight loss approach. Specifically, losing weight in small manageable chunks you can sustain – periods of weight loss, followed by periods of weight maintenance, and so on, until you achieve your goal weight.

    People chink wine glasses
    Holidays can also come with weight gain. Zan Lazarevic/Unsplash

    2. Weight creep can lead to obesity and health issues

    Undetected and unmanaged weight creep can result in obesity which can increase our risk of heart disease, strokes, type 2 diabetes, osteoporosis and several types of cancers (including breast, colorectal, oesophageal, kidney, gallbladder, uterine, pancreatic and liver).

    A large study examined the link between weight gain from early to middle adulthood and health outcomes later in life, following people for around 15 years. It found those who gained 2.5 to 10kg over this period had an increased incidence of type 2 diabetes, heart disease, strokes, obesity-related cancer and death compared to participants who had maintained a stable weight.

    Fortunately, there are steps we can take to build lasting habits that will make weight creep a thing of the past.

    7 practical steps to prevent weight creep

    1. Eat from big to small

    Aim to consume most of your food earlier in the day and taper your meal sizes to ensure dinner is the smallest meal you eat.

    A low-calorie or small breakfast leads to increased feelings of hunger, specifically appetite for sweets, across the course of the day.

    We burn the calories from a meal 2.5 times more efficiently in the morning than in the evening. So emphasising breakfast over dinner is also good for weight management.

    Man shops for vegetables
    Aim to consume bigger breakfasts and smaller dinners. Michael Burrows/Pexels

    2. Use chopsticks, a teaspoon or an oyster fork

    Sit at the table for dinner and use different utensils to encourage eating more slowly.

    This gives your brain time to recognise and adapt to signals from your stomach telling you you’re full.

    3. Eat the full rainbow

    Fill your plate with vegetables and fruits of different colours first to support eating a high-fibre, nutrient-dense diet that will keep you feeling full and satisfied.

    Meals also need to be balanced and include a source of protein, wholegrain carbohydrates and healthy fat to meet our dietary needs – for example, eggs on wholegrain toast with avocado.

    4. Reach for nature first

    Retrain your brain to rely on nature’s treats – fresh vegetables, fruit, honey, nuts and seeds. In their natural state, these foods release the same pleasure response in the brain as ultra-processed and fast foods, helping you avoid unnecessary calories, sugar, salt and unhealthy fats.

    5. Choose to move

    Look for ways to incorporate incidental activity into your daily routine – such as taking the stairs instead of the lift – and boost your exercise by challenging yourself to try a new activity.

    Just be sure to include variety, as doing the same activities every day often results in boredom and avoidance.

    Man with tennis racket
    Try new activities or sports to keep your interest up. Cottonbro Studio/Pexels

    6. Prioritise sleep

    Set yourself a goal of getting a minimum of seven hours of uninterrupted sleep each night, and help yourself achieve it by avoiding screens for an hour or two before bed.

    7. Weigh yourself regularly

    Getting into the habit of weighing yourself weekly is a guaranteed way to help avoid the kilos creeping up on us. Aim to weigh yourself on the same day, at the same time and in the same environment each week and use the best quality scales you can afford.

    At the Boden Group, Charles Perkins Centre, we are studying the science of obesity and running clinical trials for weight loss. You can register here to express your interest.

    Nick Fuller, Clinical Trials Director, Department of Endocrinology, RPA Hospital, University of Sydney

    This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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  • Vibration Plate, Review After 6 Months: Is It Worth It?

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

    Is it push-button exercise, or an expensive fad, or something else entirely? Robin, from “The Science of Self-Care”, has insights:

    Science & Experience

    According to the science (studies cited in the video and linked-to in the video description, underneath it on YouTube), vibration therapy does have some clear benefits, namely:

    • Bone health (helps with bone density, particularly beneficial for postmenopausal women)
    • Muscle recovery (reduces lactate levels, aiding faster recovery)
    • Joint health (reduces pain and improves function in osteoarthritis patients)
    • Muscle stimulation (helps older adults maintain muscle mass)
    • Cognitive function (due to increased blood flow to the brain)

    And from her personal experience, the benefits included:

    • Improved recovery after exercise, reducing muscle soreness and stiffness
    • Reduced back pain and improved posture (not surprising, given the need for stabilizing muscles when using one of these)
    • Better circulation and (likely resulting from same) skin clarity

    She did not, however, notice:

    • Any reduction in cellulite
    • Any change in body composition (fat loss or muscle gain)

    For a deeper look into these things and more, plus a demonstration of how the machine actually operates, enjoy:

    Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!

    Want to learn more?

    You might also like to read:

    Take care!

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  • Healing Arthritis – by Dr. Susan Blum

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

    We previously reviewed another book by this author, her Immune System Recovery Plan, and today it’s more specific: healing arthritis

    Of course, not all arthritis is rooted in immune dysfunction, but a) all of it is made worse by immune dysfunction and b) rheumatoid arthritis, which is an autoimmune disease, affects 1% of the population.

    This book tackles all kinds of arthritis, by focusing on addressing the underlying causes and treating those, and (whether it was the cause or not) reducing inflammation without medication, because that will always help.

    The “3 steps” mentioned in the subtitle are three stages of a plan to improve the gut microbiome in such a way that it not only stops worsening your arthritis, but starts making it better.

    The style here is on the hard end of pop-science, so if you want something more conversational/personable, then this won’t be so much for you, but if you just want the information and explanation, then this does it just fine, and it has frequent references to the science to back it up, with a reassuringly extensive bibliography.

    Bottom line: if you have arthritis and want a book that will help you to get either symptom-free or as close to that as is possible from your current condition (bearing in mind that arthritis is generally degenerative), then this is a great book for that.

    Click here to check out Healing Arthritis, and heal yours!

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  • How Science News Outlets Can Lie To You (Yes, Even If They Cite Studies!)

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

    Each Monday, we’re going to be bringing you cutting-edge research reviews to not only make your health and productivity crazy simple, but also, constantly up-to-date.

    But today, in this special edition, we want to lay out plain and simple how to see through a lot of the tricks used not just by popular news outlets, but even sometimes the research publications themselves.

    That way, when we give you health-related science news, you won’t have to take our word for it, because you’ll be able to see whether the studies we cite really support the claims we make.

    Of course, we’ll always give you the best, most honest information we have… But the point is that you shouldn’t have to trust us! So, buckle in for today’s special edition, and never have to blindly believe sci-hub (or Snopes!) again.

    The above now-famous Tumblr post that became a meme is a popular and obvious example of how statistics can be misleading, either by error or by deliberate spin.

    But what sort of mistakes and misrepresentations are we most likely to find in real research?

    Spin Bias

    Perhaps most common in popular media reporting of science, the Spin Bias hinges on the fact that most people perceive numbers in a very “fuzzy logic” sort of way. Do you?

    Try this:

    • A million seconds is 11.5 days
    • A billion seconds is not weeks, but 13.2 months!

    …just kidding, it’s actually nearly thirty-two years.

    Did the months figure seem reasonable to you, though? If so, this is the same kind of “human brains don’t do large numbers” problem that occurs when looking at statistics.

    Let’s have a look at reporting on statistically unlikely side effects for vaccines, as an example:

    • “966 people in the US died after receiving this vaccine!” (So many! So risky!)
    • “Fewer than 3 people per million died after receiving this vaccine!” (Hmm, I wonder if it is worth it?)
    • “Half of unvaccinated people with this disease die of it” (Oh)

    How to check for this: ask yourself “is what’s being described as very common really very common?”. To keep with the spiders theme, there are many (usually outright made-up) stats thrown around on social media about how near the nearest spider is at any given time. Apply this kind of thinking to medical conditions.. If something affects only 1% of the population (So few! What a tiny number!), how far would you have to go to find someone with that condition? The end of your street, perhaps?

    Selection/Sampling Bias

    Diabetes disproportionately affects black people, but diabetes research disproportionately focuses on white people with diabetes. There are many possible reasons for this, the most obvious being systemic/institutional racism. For example, advertisements for clinical trial volunteer opportunities might appear more frequently amongst a convenient, nearby, mostly-white student body. The selection bias, therefore, made the study much less reliable.

    Alternatively: a researcher is conducting a study on depression, and advertises for research subjects. He struggles to get a large enough sample size, because depressed people are less likely to respond, but eventually gets enough. Little does he know, even the most depressed of his subjects are relatively happy and healthy compared with the silent majority of depressed people who didn’t respond.

    See This And Many More Educational Cartoons At Sketchplanations.com!

    How to check for this: Does the “method” section of the scientific article describe how they took pains to make sure their sample was representative of the relevant population, and how did they decide what the relevant population was?

    Publication Bias

    Scientific publications will tend to prioritise statistical significance. Which seems great, right? We want statistically significant studies… don’t we?

    We do, but: usually, in science, we consider something “statistically significant” when it hits the magical marker of p=0.05 (in other words, the probability of getting that result is 1/20, and the results are reliably coming back on the right side of that marker).

    However, this can result in the clinic stopping testing once p=0.05 is reached, because they want to have their paper published. (“Yay, we’ve reached out magical marker and now our paper will be published”)

    So, you can think of publication bias as the tendency for researchers to publish ‘positive’ results.

    If it weren’t for publication bias, we would have a lot more studies that say “we tested this, and here are our results, which didn’t help answer our question at all”—which would be bad for the publication, but good for science, because data is data.

    To put it in non-numerical terms: this is the same misrepresentation as the technically true phrase “when I misplace something, it’s always in the last place I look for it”—obviously it is, because that’s when you stop looking.

    There’s not a good way to check for this, but be sure to check out sample sizes and see that they’re reassuringly large.

    Reporting/Detection/Survivorship Bias

    There’s a famous example of the rise in “popularity” of left-handedness. Whilst Americans born in ~1910 had a bit under a 3.5% chance of being left handed, those born in ~1950 had a bit under a 12% change.

    Why did left-handedness become so much more prevalent all of a sudden, and then plateau at 12%?

    Simple, that’s when schools stopped forcing left-handed children to use their right hands instead.

    In a similar fashion, countries have generally found that homosexuality became a lot more common once decriminalized. Of course the real incidence almost certainly did not change—it just became more visible to research.

    So, these biases are caused when the method of data collection and/or measurement leads to a systematic error in results.

    How to check for this: you’ll need to think this through logically, on a case by case basis. Is there a reason that we might not be seeing or hearing from a certain demographic?

    And perhaps most common of all…

    Confounding Bias

    This is the bias that relates to the well-known idea “correlation ≠ causation”.

    Everyone has heard the funny examples, such as “ice cream sales cause shark attacks” (in reality, both are more likely to happen in similar places and times; when many people are at the beach, for instance).

    How can any research paper possibly screw this one up?

    Often they don’t and it’s a case of Spin Bias (see above), but examples that are not so obviously wrong “by common sense” often fly under the radar:

    “Horse-riding found to be the sport that most extends longevity”

    Should we all take up horse-riding to increase our lifespans? Probably not; the reality is that people who can afford horses can probably afford better than average healthcare, and lead easier, less stressful lives overall. The fact that people with horses typically have wealthier lifestyles than those without, is the confounding variable here.

    See This And Many More Educational Cartoons on XKCD.com!

    In short, when you look at the scientific research papers cited in the articles you read (you do look at the studies, yes?), watch out for these biases that found their way into the research, and you’ll be able to draw your own conclusions, with well-informed confidence, about what the study actually tells us.

    Science shouldn’t be gatekept, and definitely shouldn’t be abused, so the more people who know about these things, the better!

    So…would one of your friends benefit from this knowledge? Forward it to them!

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  • How Much Weight Gain Do Antidepressants Cause?

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

    There’s a lot of talk in the news lately about antidepressants and weight gain, so let’s look at some numbers.

    Here’s a study from July 2024 that compared the weight gain of eight popular antidepressants, and pop-science outlets have reported it with such snippets as:

    Bupropion users were approximately 15–20% less likely to gain a clinically significant amount of weight than those taking the most common medication, sertraline.

    The researchers considered weight gain of 5% or more as clinically significant.❞

    Read in full: Study compares weight gain across eight common antidepressants

    At this point, you might (especially if you or a loved one is on sertraline) be grabbing a calculator and seeing what 5% of your weight is, and might be concerned at the implications.

    However, this is a little like if, in our This or That section, we were to report that food A has 17x more potassium than food B, without mentioning that food A has 0.01mg/100g and food A has 0.17mg/100g, and thus that, while technically “17x more”, the difference is trivial.

    As a quick aside: we do, by the way, try to note when things like that might skew the stats and either wipe them out by not mentioning that they contain potassium at all (as they barely do), or if it’s a bit more, describing them as being “approximately equal in potassium” or else draw attention to the “but the amounts are trivial in both cases”.

    Back to the antidepressants: in fact, for those two antidepressants compared in that snippet, the truth is (when we go looking in the actual research paper and the data within):

    • sertraline was associated with an average weight change of +1.5kg (just over 3lb) over the course of 24 months
    • bupropion was associated with an average weight change of +0.5kg (just under 1lb) over the course of 24 months

    Sertraline being the most weight-gain-inducing of the 8 drugs compared, and bupropion being the least, this means (with them both having fairly even curves):

    • sertraline being associated with an average weight change of 0.06kg (about 2oz) per month
    • bupropion being associated with an average weight change of 0.02kg (less than 1oz) per month

    For all eight, see the chart here in the paper itself:

    Medication-Induced Weight Change Across Common Antidepressant Treatments ← we’ve made the link go straight to the chart, for your convenience, but you can also read the whole paper there

    While you’re there, you might also see that for some antidepressants, such as duloxetine, fluoxetine, and venlafaxine, there’s an initial weight gain, but then it clearly hits a plateau and weight ceases to change after a certain point, which is worth considering too, since “you’ll gain a little bit of weight and then stay at that weight” is a very different prognosis from “you’ll gain a bit of weight and keep gaining it forever until you die”.

    But then again, consider this:

    Most adults will gain half a kilo this year – and every year. Here’s how to stop “weight creep”

    That’s more weight gain than one gets on sertraline, the most weight-gain-inducing antidepressant tested!

    What about over longer-term use?

    Here’s a more recent study (December 2024) that looked at antidepressant use over 6 years, and found an average 2% weight gain over those 6 years, but it didn’t break it down by antidepressant type, sadly:

    Trajectories of antidepressant use and 6-year change in body weight: a prospective population-based cohort study

    …which seems like quite a wasted opportunity, since some of the medications considered are very different, working on completely different systems (for example, SSRIs vs NDRIs, working on serotonin or norepinephrine+dopamine, respectively—see our Neurotransmitter Cheatsheet for more about those) and having often quite different side effects. Nevertheless, the study (despite collecting this information) didn’t then tabulate the data, and instead considered them all to be the same factor, “antidepressants”.

    What this study did do that was useful was included a control group not on antidepressants so we know that on average:

    • never-users of antidepressants gained an average of 1% of their bodyweight over those 6 years
    • users-and-desisters of antidepressants gained an average of 1.8% of their bodyweight over those 6 years*
    • continuing users of antidepressants gained an average of 2% of their bodyweight over those 6 years

    *for this group, weight gain was a commonly cited reason for stopping taking the antidepressants in question

    Writer’s anecdote: I’ve been on mirtazapine (a presynaptic alpha2-adrenoreceptor antagonist which increases central noradrenergic and serotonergic neurotransmission) for some years and can only say that I wish I’d been on it decades previously. I requested mirtazapine specifically, because I’m me and I know my stuff and considered it would most likely be by far the best fit for me out of the options available. Starting at a low dose, the only meaningful side effect was mild sedation (expected, and associated only with low-dose use); increasing after a couple of weeks to a moderate dose, that side effect disappeared and now the only remaining side effect is a slight dryness of the mouth, which is fine, as it ensures I remember to stay hydrated 🙂 anyway, my weight hasn’t changed (beyond very small temporary fluctuations) in the time I’ve been on mirtazapine. Disclaimer: the plural of anecdote is not data, and I can only speak for my own experience, and am not making any particular recommendation here. Your personal physiology will be different from mine, and may respond well or badly to any given treatment according to your own physiology.

    Further considerations

    This is touched on in the “Discussion” section of the latter paper (so do check that out if you want all the details, more than we can reasonably put here), but there are other factors to consider, for example:

    • whether people were underweight/healthy weight/overweight at baseline (sometimes, a weight gain can be a good thing, recovering from an illness, and in the case of the illness that is depression, weight can swing either way)
    • antidepressants changing eating and exercise habits (generally speaking: more likely to eat more and exercise more)
    • body composition! How did they not cover this (neither paper did)?! Muscle weighs more than fat, and improvements in exercise can result in an increase in muscle and thus an increase in overall weight.

    As researchers like to say, “this highlights the need for more high-quality studies to look into…” (and then the various things that went unexamined).

    Want to know more?

    Check out our previous main feature:

    Antidepressants: Personalization Is Key!

    Take care!

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  • 52 Weeks to Better Mental Health – by Dr. Tina Tessina

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    We’ve written before about the health benefits of journaling, but how to get started, and how to make it a habit, and what even to write about?

    Dr. Tessina presents a year’s worth of journaling prompts with explanations and exercises, and no, they’re not your standard CBT flowchart things, either. Rather, they not only prompt genuine introspection, but also are crafted to be consistently upliftingyes, even if you are usually the most disinclined to such positivity, and approach such exercises with cynicism.

    There’s an element of guidance beyond that, too, and as such, this book is as much a therapist-in-a-book as you might find. Of course, no book can ever replace a competent and compatible therapist, but then, competent and compatible therapists are often harder to find and can’t usually be ordered for a few dollars with next-day shipping.

    Bottom line: if undertaken with seriousness, this book will be an excellent investment in your mental health and general wellbeing.

    Click here to check out 52 Weeks to Better Mental Health, and get on the best path for you!

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