The Sugar Alcohol That Reduces BMI!
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Inositol Does-It-Ol’!
First things first, a quick clarification up-front:
Myo-inositol or D-chiro-inositol?
We’re going to be talking about inositol today, which comes in numerous forms, but most importantly:
- Myo-inositol (myo-Ins)
- D-chiro-inositol (D-chiro-Ins)
These are both inositol, (a sugar alcohol!) and for our purposes today, the most relevant form is myo-inositol.
The studies we’ll look at today are either:
- just about myo-inositol, or
- about myo-inositol in the presence of d-chiro-inositol at a 40:1 ratio.
You have both in your body naturally; wherever supplementation is mentioned, it means supplementing with either:
- extra myo-inositol (because that’s the one the body more often needs more of), or
- both, at the 40:1 ratio that we mentioned above (because that’s one way to help balance an imbalanced ratio)
With that in mind…
Inositol against diabetes?
Inositol is known to:
- decrease insulin resistance
- increase insulin sensitivity
- have an important role in cell signaling
- have an important role in metabolism
The first two things there both mean that inositol is good against diabetes. It’s not “take this and you’re cured”, but:
- if you’re pre-diabetic it may help you avoid type 2 diabetes
- if you are diabetic (either type) it can help in the management of your diabetes.
It does this by allowing your body to make better use of insulin (regardless of whether that insulin is from your pancreas or from the pharmacy).
How does it do that? Research is still underway and there’s a lot we don’t know yet, but here’s one way, for example:
❝Evidence showed that inositol phosphates might enhance the browning of white adipocytes and directly improve insulin sensitivity through adipocytes❞
Read: Role of Inositols and Inositol Phosphates in Energy Metabolism
We mentioned its role in metabolism in a bullet-point above, and we didn’t just mean insulin sensitivity! There’s also…
Inositol for thyroid function?
The thyroid is one of the largest endocrine glands in the body, and it controls how quickly the body burns energy, makes proteins, and how sensitive the body should be to other hormones. So, it working correctly or not can have a big impact on everything from your mood to your weight to your energy levels.
How does inositol affect thyroid function?
- Inositol has an important role in thyroid function and dealing with autoimmune diseases.
- Inositol is essential to produce H2O2 (yes, really) required for the synthesis of thyroid hormones.
- Depletion of inositol may lead to the development of some thyroid diseases, such as hypothyroidism.
- Inositol supplementation seems to help in the management of thyroid diseases.
Read: The Role of Inositol in Thyroid Physiology and in Subclinical Hypothyroidism Management
Inositol for PCOS?
A systematic review published in the Journal of Gynecological Endocrinology noted:
- Inositol can restore spontaneous ovarian activity (and consequently fertility) in most patients with PCOS.
- Myo-inositol is a safe and effective treatment to improve:
- ovarian function
- healthy metabolism
- healthy hormonal balance
While very comprehensive (which is why we included it here), that review’s a little old, so…
Check out this cutting edge (Jan 2023) study whose title says it all:
Inositol for fertility?
Just last year, Mendoza et al published that inositol supplementation, together with antioxidants, vitamins, and minerals, could be an optimal strategy to improve female fertility.
This built from Gambiole and Forte’s work, which laid out how inositol is a safe compound for many issues related to fertility and pregnancy. In particular, several clinical trials demonstrated that:
- inositol can have therapeutic effects in infertile women
- inositol can also be useful as a preventive treatment during pregnancy
- inositol could prevent the onset of neural tube defects
- inositol also reduces the occurrence of gestational diabetes
Due to the safety and efficiency of inositol, it can take the place of many drugs that are contraindicated in pregnancy. Basically: take this, and you’ll need fewer other drugs. Always a win!
Read: Myo-Inositol as a Key Supporter of Fertility and Physiological Gestation
Inositol For Weight Loss
We promised you “this alcohol sugar can reduce your BMI”, and we weren’t making it up!
Zarezadeh et al conducited a very extensive systematic review, and found:
- Oral inositol supplementation has positive effect on BMI reduction.
- Inositol in the form of myo-inositol had the strongest effect on BMI reduction.
- Participants with PCOS and/or who were overweight, experienced the most significant improvement of all.
Want some inositol?
As ever, we don’t sell it (or anything else), but for your convenience, here’s myo-inositol and d-chiro-inositol at a 40:1 ratio, available on Amazon!
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The FDA Just Redefined “Healthy”—But How?
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In the ongoing war of labelling regulations (usually with advertisers on one side and regulators on the other), the FDA has updated what’s required in order to label a food as “healthy”.
Here’s what they’re now* requiring:
To bear the “healthy” claim, a food product needs to:
- Contain a certain amount of food (food group equivalent) from at least one of the food groups or subgroups (such as fruits, vegetables, fat-free and low-fat dairy etc.) recommended by the Dietary Guidelines.
- Adhere to specified limits for the following nutrients: saturated fat, sodium, and added sugars.
Source: FDA | Press Releases | FDA Finalizes Updated “Healthy” Nutrient Content Claim
*however, manufacturers have 3 years to conform, which if we’re being cynical about it, looks suspiciously like just short of a US presidential election cycle so that actual enforcement will be someone else’s problem.
Will it help?
Maybe! It’s not too dissimilar to the “traffic light system” already in use in Europe, although that currently emphasizes the absence/presence of “bad things” e.g. saturated fat, sodium, and added sugars.
It has its faults, because for example…
- not all saturated fat is bad, and a jar of coconut oil is now definitely going to get labelled as very unhealthy
- low-sodium salt is, ironically, going to to get flagged as being very high in sodium and therefore unhealthy
This latter is because on a g/100g basis, a product that’s ⅓ sodium chloride is going to have a lot of sodium, even if it’s approaching ⅔ less sodium than the product it’s (healthily!) replacing.
However, on a large scale, these kinds of problems are surely going to be small next to (hopefully) manufacturers scrambling to find ways to cut down on the saturated fats, sodium, and added sugars.
You may be wondering…
What will they replace them with?
Sometimes, companies trying to make something healthier will mess up, like when the health risks of smoking hit public consciousness, one cigarette company had the bright idea of putting asbestos in their filter tips, to market them as healthier. So, could something similar happen here?
- Saturated fat: definitely could; because the health benefits/risks of different kinds of fats and their constituent fatty acids are a lot more nuanced than just “saturated” vs “mono-/polyunsaturated”, it is definitely possible that companies may replace healthier saturated-heavy fats with less healthy unsaturated fats, depending on what is cheaper.
- See also: Can Saturated Fats Be Healthy?
- Sodium: probably not; likely go-to replacements for sodium chloride will be potassium chloride (healthier than sodium chloride) and MSG (has an unearned bad reputation in the US, but is healthier than sodium chloride).
- Added sugars: probably—things get very complicated very quickly when it comes to artificial sweeteners, and also the crux will definitely lie in what gets defined as an “added sugar”; watch out for a rise in the use of things that slide by the definition of added sugar while still being chemically (and, which is important, metabolically) the same thing.
Well that doesn’t sound great
It doesn’t, but on the flipside, the positive inclusions will probably be mostly good.
For example, the only way to get a “healthy” labelling in including fiber is to include more fiber, same with vitamins and minerals.
The low-fat dairy thing could possibly get abused (much like with the general “low-fat” trend of the 80s).
The “portion of fruit” thing will need to be carefully defined to avoid running straight back into the “this is just added sugar by another name” problem; mostly that it’ll need to still include the same amount of fiber as was in the whole fruit, gram for gram.
See also: What Matters Most For Your Heart? ← it’s about fiber, not salt or saturated fats!
Take care!
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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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What You Don’t Know Can Kill You
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Knowledge Is Power!
This is Dr. Simran Malhotra. She’s triple board-certified (in lifestyle medicine, internal medicine, and palliative care), and is also a health and wellness coach.
What does she want us to know?
Three things:
Wellness starts with your mindset
Dr. Malhotra shifted her priorities a lot during the initial and perhaps most chaotic phase of the COVID pandemic:
❝My husband, a critical care physician, was consumed in the trenches of caring for COVID patients in the ICU. I found myself knee-deep in virtual meetings with families whose loved ones were dying of severe COVID-related illnesses. Between the two of us, we saw more trauma, suffering, and death, than we could have imagined.
The COVID-19 pandemic opened my eyes to how quickly life can change our plans and reinforced the importance of being mindful of each day. Harnessing the power to make informed decisions is important, but perhaps even more important is focusing on what is in our control and taking action, even if it is the tiniest step in the direction we want to go!❞
~ Dr. Simran Malhotra
We can only make informed decisions if we have good information. That’s one of the reasons we try to share as much information as we can each day at 10almonds! But a lot will always depend on personalized information.
There are one-off (and sometimes potentially life-saving) things like health genomics:
The Real Benefit Of Genetic Testing
…but also smaller things that are informative on an ongoing basis, such as keeping track of your weight, your blood pressure, your hormones, and other metrics. You can even get fancy:
Track Your Blood Sugars For Better Personalized Health
Lifestyle is medicine
It’s often said that “food is medicine”. But also, movement is medicine. Sleep is medicine. In short, your lifestyle is the most powerful medicine that has ever existed.
Lifestyle encompasses very many things, but fortunately, there’s an “80:20 rule” in play that simplifies it a lot because if you take care of the top few things, the rest will tend to look after themselves:
These Top Few Things Make The Biggest Difference To Overall Health
Gratitude is better than fear
If we receive an unfavorable diagnosis (and let’s face it, most diagnoses are unfavorable), it might not seem like something to be grateful for.
But it is, insofar as it allows us to then take action! The information itself is what gives us our best chance of staying safe. And if that’s not possible e.g. in the worst case scenario, a terminal diagnosis, (bearing in mind that one of Dr. Malhotra’s three board certifications is in palliative care, so she sees this a lot), it at least gives us the information that allows us to make the best use of whatever remains to us.
See also: Managing Your Mortality
Which is very important!
…and/but possibly not the cheeriest note on which to end, so when you’ve read that, let’s finish today’s main feature on a happier kind of gratitude:
How To Get Your Brain On A More Positive Track (Without Toxic Positivity)
Want to hear more from Dr. Malhotra?
Showing how serious she is about how our genes do not determine our destiny and knowledge is power, here she talks about her “previvor’s journey”, as she puts it, with regard to why she decided to have preventative cancer surgery in light of discovering her BRCA1 genetic mutation:
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Take care!
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Apples vs Carrots – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing apples to carrots, we picked the carrots.
Why?
Both are sweet crunchy snacks, both rightly considered very healthy options, but one comes out clearly on top…
Both contain lots of antioxidants, albeit mostly different ones. They’re both good for this.
Looking at their macros, however, apples have more carbs while carrots have more fiber. The carb:fiber ratio in apples is already sufficient to make them very healthy, but carrots do win.
In the category of vitamins, carrots have many times more of vitamins A, B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, B9, C, E, K, and choline. Apples are not higher in any vitamins.
In terms of minerals, carrots have a lot more calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, and zinc. Apples are not higher in any minerals.
If “an apple a day keeps the doctor away”, what might a carrot a day do?
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
Sugar: From Apples to Bees, and High-Fructose C’s
Take care!
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Sesame & Peanut Tofu
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Yesterday we learned how to elevate tofu from “nutrition” to “nutritious tasty snack” with our Basic Baked Tofu recipe; today we’re expanding on that, to take it from “nutritious tasty snack” to “very respectable meal”.
You will need
For the tofu:
- The Basic Baked Tofu that we made yesterday (consider making this to be “step zero” of today’s recipe if you don’t already have a portion in the fridge)
For the sauce:
- ⅓ cup peanut butter, ideally with no added sugar or salt (if allergic to peanuts specifically, use almond butter; if allergic to nuts generally, use tahini)
- ¼ bulb garlic, grated or crushed
- 1 tbsp tamarind paste
- 1½ tbsp tamari sauce (or low-sodium soy sauce, if a substitution is necessary)
- 1 tbsp sambal oelek (or sriracha sauce, if a substitution is necessary)
- 1 tsp ground coriander
- 1 tsp ground black pepper
- ½ tsp ground sweet cinnamon
- ½ tsp MSG (or else omit; do not substitute with salt in this case unless you have a particular craving)
- zest of 1 lime
For the vegetables:
- 14 oz broccolini / tenderstem broccoli, thick ends trimmed (failing that, any broccoli)
- 6 oz shelled edamame
- 1½ tsp toasted sesame oil
For serving:
- 4 cups cooked rice (we recommend our Tasty Versatile Rice recipe)
- ½ cup raw cashews, soaked in hot water for at least 5 minutes and then drained (if allergic, substitute cooked chickpeas, rinsed and drained)
- 1 tbsp toasted sesame seeds
- 1 handful chopped cilantro, unless you have the “this tastes like soap” gene, in which case substitute chopped parsley
Method
(we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)
1) Combine the sauce ingredients in a bowl and whisk well (or use a blender if you have one that’s comfortable with this relatively small quantity of ingredients). Taste it, and adjust the ingredient ratios if you’d like more saltiness, sweetness, sourness, spiciness, umami.
2) Prepare a bowl with cold water and some ice. Steam the broccolini and edamame for about 3 minutes; as soon as they become tender, dump them into the ice bathe to halt the cooking process. Let them chill for a few minutes, then drain, dry, and toss in the sesame oil.
3) Reheat the tofu if necessary (an air fryer is great for this), and then combine with half of the sauce in a bowl, tossing gently to coat well.
4) Add a little extra water to the remaining sauce, enough to make it pourable, whisking to an even consistency.
5) Assemble; do it per your preference, but we recommend the order: rice, vegetables, tofu, cashews, sauce, sesame seeds, herbs.
Enjoy!
Want to learn more?
For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:
- Tofu vs Seitan – Which is Healthier?
- Plant vs Animal Protein: Head to Head
- Sweet Cinnamon vs Regular Cinnamon – Which is Healthier?
- Our Top 5 Spices: How Much Is Enough For Benefits?
Take care!
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Indistractable – by Nir Eyal
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Have you ever felt that you could accomplish anything you wanted/needed, if only you didn’t get distracted?
This book lays out a series of psychological interventions for precisely that aim, and it goes a lot beyond the usual “download/delete these apps to help you stop checking social media every 47 seconds”.
Some you’ll have heard of before, some you won’t have, and if even one method works for you, it’ll have been well worth your while reading this book. This reviewer, for example, enjoyed the call to identity-based strength, e.g. adopting an “I am indistractable*” perspective going into tasks. This is akin to the strength of, for example, “I don’t drink” over “I am a recovering alcoholic”.
*the usual spelling of this, by the way, is “undistractable”, but we use the author’s version here for consistency. It’s a great marketing gimmick, as all searches for the word “indistractable” will bring up his book.
Nor is the book just about maximizing productivity to the detriment of everything else; this is not about having a 25 hours per day “grindset”. Rather, it even makes sure to cover such things as focusing on one’s loved ones, for instance.
Bottom line: if you’ve tried blocking out the distractions but still find you can’t focus, this book offers next-level solutions
Click here to check out Indistractible, and become indeed indistractable!
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