Tretinoin: Because Prevention Is Better Than Cure
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The skin is an important organ to keep young and healthy, because a lot follows from it:
Protect, preserve, prevent
Jennifer Myers (now 43) began prescription retinoids not for beautifying but to treat a terrible case of cystic acne, starting with Duac and Benzaclin, then Tazorac, then Renova, then Retin-A Micro, then Retin-A cream and gel, eventually landing on Atralin, which transformed her skin. Quite a journey!
As you might imagine, the acne was physically painful and emotionally damaging during her late teens and early 20s, and the long search for something that worked required patience, distress tolerance, and persistence.
She wants to make clear that while she inherited her facial features, she did not inherit clear skin; quite to the contrary, she inherited severe acne from her mother—and her clear, smooth complexion today is earned through decades of consistency.
Consequently, she finds it frustrating that the skincare market overwhelms people into buying “shiny” new products; she encourages ignoring trends and sticking to what already works for at least 12 weeks, ideally one to two years, before judging results, because meaningful changes from tretinoin take months; in her case, it took a full year before she had the “new face” she maintains today, and many people quit too early because they expect overnight transformation.
In terms of what it will and won’t do: it improves skin turnover (which is its main mechanism of action), boosts collagen, smooths texture, brightens skin, and delays premature visible signs of aging, but it does not erase wrinkles, eliminate pores, or reverse established structural changes.
Aside from that, she attributes part of her result to diet, avoiding sugar, not smoking, and of course protecting against UV exposure.
Why is she telling us this? She wants to model what healthy, non-modified, naturally aging skin in one’s 40s can look like—she does not aim to look younger than she is, only to look like a well-cared-for 43-year-old woman.
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Want to learn more?
You might also like:
Undo The Sun’s Damage To Your Skin ← because while prevention is much better than cure, tretinoin can help with this, too
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When Science Brings Hope
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There’s a lot of bad news out there at present, including in the field of healthcare. So as some measure of respite from that, here’s some good news from the world of health science, including some actionable things to do:
Run for your life! Or casually meander for your life; that’s fine too.
Those who enjoy the equivalent of an average of 160mins slow (3mph) walking per day also enjoy the greatest healthspan. Now, there may be an element of two-way causality here (moving more means we live longer, but also, sometimes people move less because of having crippling disabilities, which are themselves not great for healthspan, as well as having the knock-on effect of reducing movement, and so such conditions yield and anti-longevity double-whammy), but for any who are able to, increasing the amount of time per day spend moving, ultimately results (on average) in a lot of extra days in life that we’ll then get to spend moving.
Depending on how active or not you are already, every extra 1 hour walked could add two hours and 49 minutes to life expectancy:
Read in full: Americans over 40 could live extra 5 years if they were all as active as top 25% of population, modeling study suggests
Related: The Doctor Who Wants Us To Exercise Less & Move More
Re-teaching your brain to heal itself
Cancer is often difficult to treat, and brain tumors can be amongst the most difficult with which to contend. Not only is everything in there very delicate, but also it’s the hardest place in the body to get at—not just surgically, but even chemically, because of the blood-brain barrier. To make matters worse, brain tumors such as glioblastoma weaken the function of T-cells (whose job it is to eliminate the cancer) by prolonged exposure.
Research has found a way to restore the responsiveness of these T-cells to immune checkpoint inhibitors, allowing them to go about their cancer-killing activities unimpeded:
Read in full: New possibilities for treating intractable brain tumors unveiled
Related: 5 Ways To Beat Cancer (And Other Diseases)
Here’s to your good health!
GLP-1 receptor agonists, originally developed to fight diabetes and now enjoying popularity as weight loss adjuvants, work in large part by cutting down food cravings by interfering with the chemical messaging about such.
As a bonus, it seems that they also can reduce alcohol cravings, especially by targetting the brain’s reward center; this was based on a large review of studies looking at how GLP-1RA use affects alcohol use, alcohol-related health problems, hospital visits, and brain reactions to alcohol cues:
Read in full: Diabetes medication may be effective in helping people drink less alcohol, research finds
Related: How To Reduce Or Quit Alcohol
Take care!
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Why Women Are 3x More Likely To Get Severe Long COVID
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.
Long COVID is no picnic. See for example:
How To Triple Your Chances Of Getting The “Razorblade Throat” COVID Variant Or Long COVID
And for that matter, here’s an interesting guest article:
Can you die from long COVID? The answer is not so simple
Actually, the answer is quite simple:
- In practical terms, it’s “yes”.
- In pedantic terms, it’s much like how technically nobody dies of AIDS (one gets AIDS, one’s immune system flatlines, and then one dies of pneumonia, or flu, or a cold, or something like that).
- So, on the books, people aren’t directly dying of long COVID, they’re dying of other things because they have long COVID which has compromised their ability to deal with the other things.
See also: falling doesn’t kill anyone!
What kills people is other events that transpire after falling (i.e., starting from when you stop falling).
So, onto the main topic…
Hormones & your gut
Researchers (Dr. Shima Shahbaz et al.) investigated why women seem to be much more likely to get severe long COVID, compared to men.
Specifically, women are 3x more likely than men to develop severe long COVID, particularly forms resembling chronic fatigue syndrome, despite often having only mild initial infections.
They analysed blood and genetic data from 78 long COVID patients (one year post-infection) and 62 controls without long COVID, and found that women with long COVID showed a distinct immune signature marked by heightened inflammation and gut permeability markers, namely:
- intestinal fatty acid binding protein
- lipopolysaccharide
- soluble CD14 (a particular kind of protein)
…all of which point to intestinal permeability (“leaky gut”) and systemic inflammation.
Notably, the female patients’ intestines were more prone to viral invasion during acute infection, allowing inflammatory molecules to circulate and sustain long-term immune activation.
This seems to have a hormonal basis. Generally speaking, sex hormones modulate immune function, often having pros and cons, and these factors are at least partially (sometimes entirely) responsible for why, as a general rule of thumb, many diseases affect men and women differently
See for example: Testosterone and estradiol reduce inflammation of human macrophages induced by anti-SARS-CoV-2 IgG
In the study cohort, women with long COVID had reduced testosterone, while men with long COVID had reduced estrogen; both had low cortisol. While normally not a problem, these shifts may have circumstantially impaired immune regulation and stress responses.
These findings overlap with myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome, which also predominantly affects women.
To read the paper in full, see: Integrated immune, hormonal, and transcriptomic profiling reveals sex-specific dysregulation in long COVID patients with ME/CFS
We explored this connection previously, here: How To Be 7.5x More Likely To Develop Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
Already have long COVID?
Well, that sucks. You have our condolences. There has been some progress on treating this, though not as much as we’d like to see.
One of our earlier articles about it, for example: Support For Long COVID & Chronic Fatigue
And more recently: What Can Be Done About Long COVID? ← includes explanation about a potential treatment that has shown a lot of promise in trials so far
Take care!
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The Doctor’s Kitchen: Healthy High Protein – by Dr. Rupy Aujla
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We previously reviewed another recipe book by the same author, the original “The Doctor’s Kitchen”, and this time it’s more of the same but with a focus on, as the title says, high protein—delivered healthily.
Before the recipes, we get an overview of the science of protein metabolism, how much we need, and how we can get it from various foods. Because of the emphasis on health, meat isn’t high on the list—but the recipes aren’t all vegan, or even all vegetarian, although there is certainly a “plants-forward” focus throughout.
Dr. Aujla not being vegan himself is probably a limiting factor on the diversity of the vegan dishes, as he says “if you don’t like soy products or are allergic, you will certainly struggle to get enough protein”. Which is very simply not remotely true (this vegan reviewer gets most of her protein from beans, lentils, and nuts), but he seems to believe it, and for this reason we see a lot of tofu, tempeh, and so forth in the recipes.
His lack of diversity of experience with vegan cooking notwithstanding, the recipes he does present are very good, so it’s not a problem so much as a limitation, that’s all.
When he says “healthy high protein”, he not only means that the protein sources will be healthy, but also the rest of the meal too. And, a lot of people think of “healthy” as being “not unhealthy”, but Dr. Aujla cares a lot about positive health—adding in ingredients with many vital nutrients, ensuring that each dish is gut-healthy, anti-inflammatory, and so forth. All these things add up to “healthy”. In short, “healthy” is not merely the absence of unhealthy ingredients, but rather is a matter of vibrant inclusion of things that will actively uplift our health and fortify us against disease.
Bottom line: if you’d like to cook with plants more, want to get plenty of protein, and do not dislike soy or have an allergy, then this book will be a fine addition to your kitchen.
Click here to check out The Doctor’s Kitchen: Healthy High Protein, and expand your repertoire!
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Soft Drinks & Your Liver: Sugar vs Sugar-Free Sweeteners
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First of all, how’s your liver health? If you’re not sure, then rather than guessing, you might like to quickly check out: 12 Signs Of Liver Disease That You Can See
…to make sure that your liver isn’t about to defy its name. The liver (when healthy) is a remarkably self-regenerative organ, but the flipside of this is that this means that very often problems do not get noticed until something goes very seriously wrong.
Now, about those soft drinks…
Not so sweet after all?
Firstly, while liver failure is commonly associated with excessive drinking of alcohol (and indeed, alcohol does very much harm the liver), actually most liver disease takes the form of the awkwardly-rebranded metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD). If you noticed that the words do not add up to the acronym, then, so did we and we haven’t found an explanation for it either*
In any case, it’s what is formerly known as, and for now at least still better known as, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD).
*We delved more into this, looking and why and how the name was changed (i.e. including the voting process for the new name), within part of a previous article of ours, here: Top Diets & Fasting vs Fatty Liver: What’s Best?
MASLD, as we will now begrudgingly refer to it, is often precipitated by a diet (including drinks) high in carbs, especially sugars, without sufficient fiber. We explained why this dietary imbalance does such harm to the liver, here: From Apples to Bees, and High-Fructose Cs: Which Sugars Are Healthier, And Which Are Just The Same?
So, it can safely be acknowledged that sugary beverages (including sugar-sweetened soft drinks, which we’re going to be talking about today, and also including fruit juices as these have been stripped of fiber, but not smoothies or whole fruit) are bad for the liver, by the mechanism described in the above-linked article.
But what of artificial sweeteners?
Since they do not contain sugar, or at least not sugar that is metabolized normally as such (since technically some artificial sweeteners are sugars, chemically speaking, but the body cannot metabolize them and so instead processes them as dietary fiber), they must be better for the liver, right?
New research presented at the United European Gasteroenterology week suggests otherwise.
In fact,
❝A higher intake of both low-or-no-sugar-sweetened beverages and sugar-sweetened beverages (>250g per day) was associated with a 60% (HR: 1.599) and 50% (HR: 1.469) elevated risk of developing MASLD, respectively.
Over the median 10.3-year follow-up, 1,178 participants developed MASLD and 108 died from liver-related causes.
Both beverage types were also positively associated with higher liver fat content.❞
Note: 250g is an odd way to measure drinks (usually measured in volume, not mass), but that equals 1 cup, in any case.
So, translating from sciencese:
- sugar-sweetened soft drinks increase the risk of MASLD by 50%
- diet soft drinks increase the risk of MASLD by 60%
Caveat: this was an observational study so when we say “increased the risk” really we mean “were associated with an increase in risk”, since it doesn’t strictly prove causality. However, with a sample size of 123,788 participants, the evidence does look rather damning, doesn’t it?
You can read more about the study here: Artificially-sweetened and sugary drinks linked to higher risk of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease
If, perchance, you have decided that for you, artificial sweeteners are still the “lesser evil” (and indeed there may be reasons this could be appropriate for some), then you might want to check out:
What’s The Healthiest Sweetener?
Want to do more for your liver?
Consider: N-Acetyl Cysteine For The Liver & More
Or if you prefer a purely dietary approach, then: How To Unfatty A Fatty Liver
Take care!
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Glutathione: More Than An Antioxidant
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Glutathione’s Benefits: The Usual And The Unique
Glutathione is a powerful antioxidant that does all the things we might reasonably expect an antioxidant to do, plus some beneficial quirks of its own.
We do make glutathione in our bodies, but we can also get it from our diet, and of course, we can also supplement it.
What foods is it in?
It’s in a lot of foods, but some top examples include:
- turmeric
- avocado
- asparagus
- almonds
- cruciferous vegetables
- watermelon
- garlic
For a fuller list and discussion, see:
What does it do?
Let’s start with the obvious; as with most things that are antioxidant, it is also anti-inflammatory. Increasing or decreasing glutathione levels is associated with decreased or increased inflammation, respectively. For example:
It being anti-inflammatory also means it can be beneficial in calming autoimmune disorders:
Glutathione: a key player in autoimmunity
And to complete the triad of “those three things that generally go together”, yes, this means it also has anticancer potential, but watch out!
❝Although in healthy cells [glutathione] is crucial for the removal and detoxification of carcinogens, elevated [glutathione] levels in tumor cells are associated with tumor progression and increased resistance to chemotherapeutic drugs❞
~ Dr. Miroslava Cuperlovic-Culf et al.
Read in full: Role of Glutathione in Cancer: From Mechanisms to Therapies
So in other words, when it comes to cancer risk management, glutathione is a great preventative, but the opposite of a cure.
What were those “beneficial quirks of its own”?
They are mainly twofold, and the first is that it improves insulin sensitivity. There are many studies showing this, but here’s a recent one from earlier this year:
The Role of Glutathione and Its Precursors in Type 2 Diabetes
The other main “beneficial quirk of its own” is that it helps prevent and/or reverse non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, as in this study from last year:
Because of glutathione’s presence in nuts, fruits, and vegetables, this makes it a great thing to work in tandem with a dietary approach to preventing/reversing NAFLD, by the way:
Anything else?
It’s being investigated as a potential treatment for Parkinson’s disease symptoms, but the science is young for this one, so there is no definitive recommendation yet in this case. If you’re interested in that, though, do check out the current state of the science at:
Potential use of glutathione as a treatment for Parkinson’s disease
Is it safe?
While there is no 100% blanket statement of safety that can ever be made about anything (even water can kill people, and oxygen ultimately kills everyone that something else doesn’t get first), glutathione has one of the safest general safety profiles possible, with the exception we noted earlier (if you have cancer, it is probably better to skip this one unless an oncologist or similar advises you otherwise).
As ever, do speak with your doctor/pharmacist to be sure in any case, though!
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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5 Movements You’ll Wish You’d Known Sooner
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Alisa Szyman, mobility coach, shows us why:
Best for mobility, best against pain
These movements are what’s needed for good mobility (range of motion, flexibility, strength, stability) while also being a top-tier way of combatting pain, due to what they do for the body’s natural functions.
Specifically, the exercises are intended to build on one another, beginning with neck stability, then restoring upper-back rotation, activating your glutes, improving hip control, and finally reducing hamstring and posterior-chain tightness:
- Chin tucks: stand tall, bring your chin slightly forwards, then push it straight back to create a double chin while keeping your head level, and follow with slow shoulder shrugs by lifting your shoulders towards your ears and lowering them under control.
- Quadruped thoracic rotations: start on all fours with one hand on the floor and the other extended to the side, rotate through your upper back to lift the arm towards the ceiling while following it with your eyes, then return to the start position.
- Glute bridges: lie on your back with your knees bent and feet flat, squeeze your glutes before lifting your hips, hold briefly at the top, then lower slowly while keeping the effort in your glutes rather than your lower back.
- Hip CARs (controlled articular rotations): stand or kneel, lift one knee and slowly move your hip through its fullest circular range while keeping your spine and upper body still, then repeat in both directions on each side.
- Sciatic nerve flossing: lie on your back with one knee bent and your foot flat on the floor, raise the other leg towards the ceiling, then gently flex and point your foot or make slow ankle circles, to glide the sciatic nerve through its range of motion.
For more on all of this plus visual demonstrations, enjoy:
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Want to learn more?
You might also like:
Best Mobility Drills For Posture & Pain Relief
Take care!
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