Undo The Sun’s Damage To Your Skin
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It’s often said that our skin is our largest organ. Our brain or liver are the largest solid organs by mass (which one comes out on top will vary from person to person), our gut is the longest, and our lungs are the largest by surface area. But our skin is large, noticeable, and has a big impact on the rest of our health.
The sun is one of the main damaging factors for our skin; assorted toxins are also a major threat for many people, and once the skin barrier gets broken, it’s a field-day for bacteria.
So, what can we do about it?
Tretinoin: the skin’s rejuvenator
Tretinoin is also called retinoic acid, not to be mistaken for retinol, although they are both retinoids. Tretinoin is much stronger.
As for what it’s stronger at:
It’s usually prescribed for the treatment of sun-damage, acne, and wrinkles. Paradoxically, it works by inflaming the skin (and then making it better, and having done so, keeping it better).
In few words: it encourages your skin to speed up its life cycle, which means that cells die and are replaced sooner, which means the average age of skin cells will be considerably younger at any given time.
This is the same principle as we see at work when it comes to cellular apoptosis and autophagy in general, and specifically the same idea as we discussed when talking about senolytics, compounds that kill aging cells:
Fisetin: The Anti-Aging Assassin
About that paradoxical inflammation…
❝The topical use of tretinoin as an antiacne agent began almost a half century ago. Since that time it has been successfully used to treat comedonal and inflammatory acne.
Over the intervening years, the beneficial effects of tretinoin have grown from an understanding of its potent cornedolytie-related properties to an evolving appreciation of its antiinflammatory actions.
…
The topical use of clindamycin and tretinoin as a combination treatment modality that includes antibacterial, comedolytic, and antiinflammatoiy properties has proven to be a very effective therapy for treating the various stages of acne
…
It is now becoming increasingly clear that there may be good reasons for these observations.❞
~ Drs. Schmidt & Gans, lightly edited here for brevity
Read in full: Tretinoin: A Review of Its Anti-inflammatory Properties in the Treatment of Acne
Against damage by the sun
The older we get, the more likely sun damage is a problem than acne. And in the case of tretinoin,
❝In several well-controlled clinical trials, the proportion of patients showing improvement was significantly higher with 0.01 or 0.05% tretinoin cream than with placebo for criteria such as global assessment, fine and coarse wrinkling, pigmentation and roughness.
Improvements in the overall severity of photodamage were also significantly greater with tretinoin than with placebo.
…
Several placebo-controlled clinical studies have demonstrated that topical tretinoin has significant efficacy in the treatment of photodamaged skin. Improvements in subjective global assessment scores were recorded in:
49–100% of patients using once-daily 0.01% tretinoin,
68–100% of patients using 0.05% tretinoin, and
0–44% of patients using placebo.❞
~ Drs. Wagstaff & Noble
…which is quite compelling.
Read in full: Tretinoin: A Review of its Pharmacological Properties and Clinical Efficacy in the Topical Treatment of Photodamaged Skin
This is very well-established by now; here’s an old paper from when the mechanism of action was unknown (here in the current day, 17 mechanisms of action have been identified; beyond the scope of this article as we only have so much room, but it’s nice to see science building on science):
❝Tretinoin cream has been used extensively to reverse the changes of photoaging. It is the first topical therapy to undergo controlled clinical testing and proved to be efficacious. These results have been substantiated with photography, histopathologie examination, and skin surface replicas.
…
Tretinoin cream has an excellent safety record; a local cutaneous hypervitaminosis A reaction is the only common problem.❞
~ Dr. Goldfarb et al.
Read in full: Topical tretinoin therapy: Its use in photoaged skin
Is it safe?
For most people, when used as directed*, yes. However, it’s likely to irritate your skin at first, and that’s normal. If this persists more than a few weeks, or seems unduly severe, then you might want to stop and talk to your doctor again.
*See also: Scarring following inappropriate use of 0.05% tretinoin gel
(in the case of a young woman who used it 4x daily instead of 1x daily)
Want to try some?
Tretinoin is prescription-only, so speak with your doctor/pharmacist about that. Alternatively, retinol is the strongest natural alternative that works on the same principles; here’s an example product on Amazon 😎
Take care!
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Black Olives vs Green Olives – Which is Healthier
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Our Verdict
When comparing black olives to green olives, we picked the black olives.
Why?
First know this: they are the same plant, just at different stages of ripening (green olives are, as you might expect, less ripe).
Next: the nutritional values of both, from macros down to the phytochemicals, are mostly very similar, but there are a few things that stand out:
• Black olives usually have more calories per serving, average about 25% more. But these are from healthy fats, so unless you’re on a calorie-restricted diet, this is probably not a consideration.
• Green olives are almost always “cured” for longer, which results in a much higher sodium content often around 200% that of black olives. Black olives are often not “cured” at all.Hence, we chose the black olives!
You may be wondering: do green olives have anything going for them that black olives don’t?
And the answer has a clue in the taste: green olives generally have a stronger, more bitter/pungent taste. And remember what we said about things that have a stronger, more bitter/pungent taste:
Tasty Polyphenols: Enjoy Bitter Foods For Your Heart & Brain
That’s right, green olives are a little higher in polyphenols than black olives.
But! If you want to enjoy the polyphenol content of green olives without the sodium content, the best way to do that is not olives, but olive oil—which is usually made from green olives.
For more about olive oil, check out:
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154 million lives saved in 50 years: 5 charts on the global success of vaccines
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We know vaccines have been a miracle for public health. Now, new research led by the World Health Organization has found vaccines have saved an estimated 154 million lives in the past 50 years from 14 different diseases. Most of these have been children under five, and around two-thirds children under one year old.
In 1974 the World Health Assembly launched the Expanded Programme on Immunization with the goal to vaccinate all children against diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis (whooping cough), measles, polio, tuberculosis and smallpox by 1990. The program was subsequently expanded to include several other diseases.
The modelling, marking 50 years since this program was established, shows a child aged under ten has about a 40% greater chance of living until their next birthday, compared to if we didn’t have vaccines. And these positive effects can be seen well into adult life. A 50-year-old has a 16% greater chance of celebrating their next birthday thanks to vaccines.
What the study did
The researchers developed mathematical and statistical models which took in vaccine coverage data and population numbers from 194 countries for the years 1974–2024. Not all diseases were included (for example smallpox, which was eradicated in 1980, was left out).
The analysis includes vaccines for 14 diseases, with 11 of these included in the Expanded Programme on Immunization. For some countries, additional vaccines such as Japanese encephalitis, meningitis A and yellow fever were included, as these diseases contribute to major disease burden in certain settings.
The models were used to simulate how diseases would have spread from 1974 to now, as vaccines were introduced, for each country and age group, incorporating data on increasing vaccine coverage over time.
Children are the greatest beneficiaries of vaccines
Since 1974, the rates of deaths in children before their first birthday has more than halved. The researchers calculated almost 40% of this reduction is due to vaccines.
The effects have been greatest for children born in the 1980s because of the intensive efforts made globally to reduce the burden of diseases like measles, polio and whooping cough.
Some 60% of the 154 million lives saved would have been lives lost to measles. This is likely due to its ability to spread rapidly. One person with measles can spread the infection to 12–18 people.
The study also found some variation across different parts of the world. For example, vaccination programs have had a much greater impact on the probability of children living longer across low- and middle-income countries and settings with weaker health systems such as the eastern Mediterranean and African regions. These results highlight the important role vaccines play in promoting health equity.
Vaccine success is not assured
Low or declining vaccine coverage can lead to epidemics which can devastate communities and overwhelm health systems.
Notably, the COVID pandemic saw an overall decline in measles vaccine coverage, with 86% of children having received their first dose in 2019 to 83% in 2022. This is concerning because very high levels of vaccination coverage (more than 95%) are required to achieve herd immunity against measles.
In Australia, the coverage for childhood vaccines, including measles, mumps and rubella, has declined compared to before the pandemic.
This study is a reminder of why we need to continue to vaccinate – not just against measles, but against all diseases we have safe and effective vaccines for.
The results of this research don’t tell us the full story about the impact of vaccines. For example, the authors didn’t include data for some vaccines such as COVID and HPV (human papillomavirus). Also, like with all modelling studies, there are some uncertainties, as data was not available for all time periods and countries.
Nonetheless, the results show the success of global vaccination programs over time. If we want to continue to see lives saved, we need to keep investing in vaccination locally, regionally and globally.
Meru Sheel, Associate Professor and Epidemiologist, Infectious Diseases, Immunisation and Emergencies Group, Sydney School of Public Health, University of Sydney and Alexandra Hogan, Mathematical epidemiologist, UNSW Sydney
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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From Cucumbers To Kindles
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You’ve Got Questions? We’ve Got Answers!
Q: Where do I get cucumber extract?
A: You can buy it from BulkSupplements.com (who, despite their name, start at 100g packs)
Alternatively: you want it as a topical ointment (for skin health) rather than as a dietary supplement (for bone and joint health), you can extract it yourself! No, it’s not “just juice cucumbers”, but it’s also not too tricky.
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Escape Self-Sabotage
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Stop Making The Same Mistakes
It’s easy to think that a self-destructive cycle is easy to avoid if you have no special will to self-destruction. However, the cycle is sneaky.
It’s sneaky because it can be passive, and/or omissions rather than actions, procrastinations rather than obvious acts of impulse, and so forth.
So, they’re often things that specifically aren’t there to see.
How to catch them
How often do you think “I wish I had [done xyz]” or “I wish I had [done yxz] sooner”?
Now, how often have you thought that about the same thing more than once? For example, “I should have kept up my exercise”.
For things like this, habit-trackers are a great way to, well, keep track of habits. If for example you planned to do a 10-minute exercise session daily but you’ve been postponing it since you got distracted on January the 2nd, then it’ll highlight that. See also:
How To Really Pick Up (And Keep!) Those Habits
Speaking of habits, this goes for other forms of procrastination, too. For example, if you are always slow to get medical check-ups, or renew your prescriptions, or get ready for some regularly-occurring thing in your schedule, then set a reminder in your preferred way (phone app, calendar on the wall, whatever) and when the appointed time arrives (to book the check-up, renew the prescription, do your taxes, whatever), do it on the day you set your reminder for, as a personal rule for you that you keep to, barring extreme calamity.
By “extreme calamity” we mean less “running late today” and more “house burned down”.
Digital traps
Bad habits can be insidious in other ways too, like getting sucked into social media scrolling (it is literally designed to do that to you; you are not immune modern programming hijacking evolutionary dopamine responses).
Setting a screentime limit (you can specify “just these apps” if you like) will help with this. On most devices, this feature includes a sticky notification in the notification bar, that’ll remind you “27 out of 30 minutes remaining” or whatever you set it for. That’ll remind you to do what you went there to do, instead of getting caught in the endless scroll (and if you went there to just browse, to do so briefly).
Here’s how to set that:
Instructions for iOS devices | Instructions for Android devices
Oh, and on the topic of social media? If you find yourself getting caught up in unproductive arguments on the Internet, try the three-response rule:
- You reply; they reply (no progress made)
- You reply; they reply (still no progress made)
- You reply; they reply (still yet no progress made)
You reply just one more time: “I have a personal rule that if I’m arguing on the Internet and no progress has been made after three replies, I don’t reply further—I find this is helpful to avoid a lot of time lost to pointless arguing that isn’t going anywhere. Best wishes.”
(and then stick to it, no matter how they try to provoke you; best is to just not look until at least the next day)
When “swept up in love” gets to one of those little whirlpools…
The same works in personal relationships, by the way. If for example you are arguing with a loved one and not making progress, it can be good if you both have a pre-arranged agreement that either of you can, up to once on any given day, invoke a “time-out” (e.g. 30 minutes, but you agree the time between you when you first make this standing policy) during which you will both keep out of the other’s way, and come back with a more productive head on (remembering that things go best when it’s you both vs the problem, rather than vs each other).
See also:
Seriously Useful Communication Skills: Conflict Resolution
What if the self-sabotaging cycle is active and apparent?
Well, that is less sneaky, but certainly no less serious, and sometimes moreso. An obvious example is drinking too much; this is often cyclical in nature. We wrote about this one previously:
That article’s alcohol-specific, but the same advices go for other harmful activities, including other substance abuse (which in turn includes binge-eating), as well psychological addictions (such as gambling, for example).
Finally…
If your destructive cycle is more of a rut you’ve got stuck in, a common advice is to change something, anything, to get out of the rut.
That can be very bad advice! Because sometimes the change you go for is absolutely not the change that was needed, and is rather just cracking under pressure and doing something impulsive.
Here’s one way to actively get out of a slump:
Behavioral Activation Against Depression & Anxiety
Note: you do not have to be depressed or anxious to do this. But the point is, it’s a tool you can use even if you are depressed and/or anxious, so it’s a good thing to try for getting out of most kinds of slumps.
And really finally, here’s a resource for, well, the title speaks for itself:
When You Know What You “Should” Do (But Knowing Isn’t The Problem)
Take care!
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Fisetin: The Anti-Aging Assassin
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Out With The Old…
Fisetin is a flavonoid (specifically, a flavonol), but it’s a little different than most. While it has the usual antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and anti-cancer properties you might reasonably expect from flavonoids, it has an extra anti-aging trick up its sleeve that most don’t.
❝Fisetin is a flavonol that shares distinct antioxidant properties with a plethora of other plant polyphenols. Additionally, it exhibits a specific biological activity of considerable interest as regards the protection of functional macromolecules against stress which results in the sustenance of normal cells cytoprotection. Moreover, it shows potential as an anti-inflammatory, chemopreventive, chemotherapeutic and recently also senotherapeutic agent❞
~ Dr. Grynkiewicz & Dr. Demchuk
Let’s briefly do some due diligence on its expected properties, and then we’ll take a look at its bonus anti-aging effects.
The flavonol that does-it-ol
Because of the similar mechanisms involved, there are three things that often come together, which are:
- Antioxidant
- Anti-inflammatory
- Anticancer
This list often gets expanded to also include:
- Anti-aging
…although that is usually the last thing to get tested out of that list.
In today’s case, let’s kick it off with…
❝Fisetin (3,3′,4′,7-tetrahydroxyflavone) is a dietary flavonoid found in various fruits (strawberries, apples, mangoes, persimmons, kiwis, and grapes), vegetables (tomatoes, onions, and cucumbers), nuts, and wine that has shown strong anti-inflammatory, anti-oxidant, anti-tumorigenic, anti-invasive, anti-angiogenic, anti-diabetic, neuroprotective, and cardioprotective effects❞
Read more: Fisetin and Its Role in Chronic Diseases
Understanding its anticancer mechanisms
The way that fisetin fights cancer is basically “all the ways”, and this will be important when we get to its special abilities shortly:
❝Being a potent anticancer agent, fisetin has been used to inhibit stages in the cancer cells (proliferation, invasion),prevent cell cycle progression, inhibit cell growth, induce apoptosis, cause polymerase (PARP) cleavage, and modulate the expressions of Bcl‐2 family proteins in different cancer cell lines (HT‐29, U266, MDA‐MB‐231, BT549, and PC‐3M‐luc‐6), respectively. Further, fisetin also suppresses the activation of the PKCα/ROS/ERK1/2 and p38 MAPK signaling pathways, reduces the NF‐κB activation, and down‐regulates the level of the oncoprotein securin. Fisetin also inhibited cell division and proliferation and invasion as well as lowered the TET1 expression levels. ❞
Read more: Fisetin: An anticancer perspective
There’s also more about it than we even have room to quote, here:
Now For What’s New And Exciting: Senolysis
All that selectivity that fisetin exhibits when it comes to “this cell gets to live, and this one doesn’t” actions?
It makes a difference when it comes to aging, too. Because aging and cancer happen by quite similar mechanisms; they’re both DNA-copying errors that get copied forward, to our detriment.
- In the case of cancer, it’s a cell line that accidentally became immortal and so we end up with too many of them multiplying in one place (a tumor)
- In the case of aging, it’s the cellular equivalent of “a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy” gradually losing information as it goes
In both cases…
The cell must die if we want to live
Critically, and which quality differentiates it from a lot of other flavonoids, fisetin has the ability to selectively kill senescent cells.
To labor the photocopying metaphor, this means there’s an office worker whose job it is to say “this photocopy is barely legible, I’m going to toss this, and then copy directly from the clearest copy we have instead”, thus keeping the documents (your DNA) in pristine condition.
In fisetin’s case, this was first tested in mouse (in vivo) studies, and in human tissue (in vitro) studies, before moving to human clinical studies:
❝Of the 10 flavonoids tested, fisetin was the most potent senolytic.
The natural product fisetin has senotherapeutic activity in mice and in human tissues. Late life intervention was sufficient to yield a potent health benefit.❞
~ Dr. Matthew Yousefzadeh et al.
Read in full: Fisetin is a senotherapeutic that extends health and lifespan
There’s lots more science that’s been done to it since that first groundbreaking study though; here’s a more recent example:
Want some?
We don’t sell it, but here for your convenience is an example product on Amazon
Enjoy!
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Finish What You Start – by Peter Hollins
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For some people, getting started is the problem. For others of us, getting started is the easy part! We just need a little help not dropping things we started.
There are summaries at the starts and ends of sections, and many “quick tips” to get you back on track.
As a taster: one of these is “temptation bundling“, combining unpleasant things with pleasant. A kind of “spoonful of sugar” approach.
Hollins also discusses hyperbolic discounting (the way we tend to value rewards according to how near they are, and procrastinate accordingly). He offers a tool to overcome this, too, the “10–10–10 rule“.
Also dealt with is “the preparation trap“, and how to know when you have enough information to press on.
For a lot of us, the places we’re most likely to drop a project is 20% in (initial enthusiasm wore off) or 80% in (“it’s nearly done; no need to worry about it”). Those are the times when the advices in this book can be particularly handy!
All in all, a great book for seeing a lot of things to completion.
Don’t Forget…
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Learn to Age Gracefully
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