Vitamin C (Drinkable) vs Vitamin C (Chewable) – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing vitamin C (drinkable) to vitamin C (chewable), we picked the drinkable.
Why?
First let’s look at what’s more or less the same in each:
- The usable vitamin C content is comparable
- The bioavailability is comparable
- The additives to hold it together are comparable
So what’s the difference?
With the drinkable, you also drink a glass of water
If you’d like to read more about how to get the most out of the vitamins you take, you can do so here:
Are You Wasting Your Vitamins? Maybe, But You Don’t Have To
If you’d like to get some of the drinkable vitamin C, here’s an example product on Amazon
Enjoy!
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Limitless Expanded Edition – by Jim Kwik
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This is a little flashier in presentation than we usually go for here, but the content is actually very good. Indeed, we’ve featured Jim Kwik before, with different, but also good content—in that case, physical exercises that strengthen the brain.
This time, Kwik (interspersed with motivational speeches that you may or may not benefit from, but they are there) offers a step-by-step course in improving various metrics of cognitive ability. His methods were produced by trial and error, and now have been refined and enjoyed by man. If it sounds like a sales gimmick, it is a bit, but the good news is that everything you need to benefit is in the book; it’s not about upselling to a course or “advanced” books or whatnot.
The style is enthusiastically conversational, and instructions when given (which is often) are direct and clear.
Bottom line: one of the most critical abilities a brain can have is the ability to improve itself, so whatever level your various cognitive abilities are at right now, if you apply this book, you will almost certainly improve in one or more areas, which will make it worth the price of the book.
Click here to check out Limitless, and find out what you can do!
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What to Eat When – by Drs. Michael Roizen and Michael Crupain
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Here at 10almonds, we cover a lot of the “what to eat”, but tend to only sometimes touch on the “when”—and indeed, this is a reflection of a popular focus. But what if we were to pay a little more attention to that “when”; what would it get us?
According to Drs. Roizen and Crupain… Quite a bit!
In this work, they take into account the various factors affecting the benefit (or harm!) of what we eat when:
- in the context of our circadian rhythm
- in the context of our insulin responses
- in the context of intermittent fasting
The style throughout is very focused on practical actionable advice. For example, amongst other lifestyle-adjustment suggestions, the authors make the case for front-loading various kinds of food earlier in the day, and eating more attentively and mindfully when we do eat.
They also offer a lot of “quick tips” of the kind we love here at 10almonds! Ranging from “how about this breakfast idea” to “roasting chickpeas like this makes a great snack” to “this dessert is three healthy foods disguised as a sundae”
All in all, if you’d like a stack of small tweaks that can add up to a big difference in your overall health, this is a book for you.
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The BAT-pause!
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When Cold Weather & The Menopause Battle It Out
You may know that (moderate, safe) exposure to the cold allows our body to convert our white and yellow fat into the much healthier brown fat—also called brown adipose tissue, or “BAT” to its friends.
If you didn’t already know that, then well, neither did scientists until about 15 years ago:
The Changed Metabolic World with Human Brown Adipose Tissue: Therapeutic Visions
You can read more about it here:
Cool Temperature Alters Human Fat and Metabolism
This is important, especially because the white fat that gets converted is the kind that makes up most visceral fat—the kind most associated with all-cause mortality:
Visceral Belly Fat & How To Lose It ← this is not the same as your subcutaneous fat, the kind that sits directly under your skin and keeps you warm; this is the fat that goes between your organs and of which we should only have a small amount!
The BAT-pause
It’s been known (since before the above discovery) that BAT production slows considerably as we get older. Not too shocking—after all, many metabolic functions slow as we get older, so why should fat regulation be any different?
But! Rodent studies found that this was tied less to age, but to ovarian function: rats who underwent ovariectomies suffered reduced BAT production, regardless of their age.
Naturally, it’s been difficult to recreate such studies in humans, because it’s difficult to find a large sample of young adults willing to have their ovaries whipped out (or even suppressed chemically) to see how badly their metabolism suffers as a result.
Nor can an observational study (for example, of people who incidentally have ovaries removed due to ovarian cancer) usefully be undertaken, because then the cancer itself and any additional cancer treatments would be confounding factors.
Perimenopausal study to the rescue!
A recent (published last month, at time of writing!) study looked at women around the age of menopause, but specifically in cohorts before and after, measuring BAT metabolism.
By dividing the participants into groups based on age and menopausal status, and dividing the post-menopausal group into “takes HRT” and “no HRT” groups, and dividing the pre-menopausal group into “normal ovarian function” and “ovarian production of estrogen suppressed to mimic slightly early menopause” groups (there’s a drug for that), and then having groups exposed to warm and cold temperatures, and measuring BAT metabolism in all cases, they were able to find…
It is about estrogen, not age!
You can read more about the study here:
“Good” fat metabolism changes tied to estrogen loss, not necessarily to aging, shows study
…and the study itself, here:
Brown adipose tissue metabolism in women is dependent on ovarian status
What does this mean for men?
This means nothing directly for (cis) men, sorry.
But to satisfy your likely curiosity: yes, testosterone does at least moderately suppress BAT metabolism—based on rodent studies, anyway, because again it’s difficult to find enough human volunteers willing to have their testicles removed for science (without there being other confounding variables in play, anyway):
Testosterone reduces metabolic brown fat activity in male mice
So, that’s bad per se, but there isn’t much to be done about it, since the rest of your (addressing our male readers here) metabolism runs on testosterone, as do many of your bodily functions, and you would suffer many unwanted effects without it.
However, as men do typically have notably less body fat in general than women (this is regulated by hormones), the effects of changes in BAT metabolism are rather less pronounced in men (per testosterone level changes) than in women (per estrogen level changes), because there’s less overall fat to convert.
In summary…
While menopausal HRT is not necessarily a silver bullet to all metabolic problems, its BAT-maintaining ability is certainly one more thing in its favor.
See also:
Dr. Jen Gunter | What You Should Have Been Told About The Menopause Beforehand
Take care!
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Cherries vs Blueberries – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing cherries to blueberries, we picked the blueberries.
Why?
It was close! And blueberries only won by virtue of taking an average value for cherries; we could have (if you’ll pardon the phrase) cherry-picked tart cherries for extra benefits that’d put them ahead of blueberries. That’s how close it is.
In terms of macros, they are almost identical, so nothing to set them apart there.
In the category of vitamins, they are mostly comparable except that blueberries have a lot more vitamin K, and cherries have a lot more vitamin A. Since vitamin K is the vitamin that’s scarcer in general, we’ll call blueberries’ vitamin K content a win.
Blueberries do also have about 6x more vitamin E, with a cup of blueberries containing about 10% of the daily requirement (and cherries containing almost none). Another small win for blueberries.
When it comes to minerals, they are mostly comparable; the largest point of difference is that blueberries contain more manganese while cherries contain more copper; nothing to decide between them here.
We’re down to counting amino acids and antioxidants now, so blueberries have a lot more cystine and tyrosine. They also have slightly more of amino acids that they both only have trace amounts of. And as for antioxidants? Blueberries contain notably more quercetin.
So, blueberries win the day—but if we had specified tart cherries rather than taking an average, they could have come out on top. Enjoy both!
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
Take care!
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The “Yes I Can” Salad
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Sometimes, we are given to ask ourselves: “Can I produce a healthy and tasty salad out of what I have in?” and today we show how, with a well-stocked pantry, the answer is “yes I can”, regardless of what is (or isn’t) in the fridge.
You will need
- 1 can cannellini beans, drained
- 1 can sardines (if vegetarian/vegan, substitute ½ can chickpeas, drained)
- 1 can mandarin segments
- 1 handful pitted black olives, from a jar (or from a can, if you want to keep the “yes I can” theme going)
- ½ red onion, thinly sliced (this can be from frozen, defrosted—sliced/chopped onion is always a good thing to have in your freezer, by the way; your writer here always has 1–6 lbs of chopped onions in hers, divided into 1lb bags)
- 1 oz lemon juice
- 1 tbsp chopped parsley (this can be freeze-dried, but fresh is good if you have it)
- 1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
- 1 tbsp chia seeds
- 1 tsp miso paste
- 1 tsp honey (omit if you don’t care for sweetness; substitute with agave nectar if you do like sweetness but don’t want to use honey specifically)
- 1 tsp red chili flakes
Method
(we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)
1) Combine the onion and the lemon juice in a small bowl, massaging gently
2) Mix (in another bowl) the miso paste with the chili flakes, chia seeds, honey, olive oil, and the spare juice from the can of mandarin segments, and whisk it to make a dressing.
3) Add the cannellini beans, sardines (break them into bite-size chunks), mandarin segments, olives, and parsley, tossing them thoroughly (but gently) in the dressing.
4) Top with the sliced onion, discarding the excess lemon juice, and serve:
Enjoy!
Want to learn more?
For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:
- Three Daily Servings of Beans?
- We Are Such Stuff As Fish Are Made Of
- Chia: The Tiniest Seeds With The Most Value
Take care!
Don’t Forget…
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Wheat Belly, Revised & Expanded Edition – by Dr. William Davis
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This review pertains to the 2019 edition of the book, not the 2011 original, which will not have had all of the same research.
We are told, by scientific consensus, to enjoy plenty of whole grains as part of our diet. So, what does cardiologist Dr. William Davis have against wheat?
Firstly, not all grains are interchangeable, and wheat—in particular, modern strains of wheat—cannot be described as the same as the wheat of times past.
While this book does touch on the gluten aspect (and Celiac disease), and notes that modern wheat has a much higher gluten content than older strains, most of this book is about other harms that wheat can do to us.
Dr. Davis explores and explains the metabolic implications of wheat’s unique properties on organs such as our pancreas, liver, heart, and brain.
The book does also have recipes and meal plans, though in this reviewer’s opinion they were a little superfluous. Wheat is not hard to cut out unless you are living in a food desert or are experiencing food poverty, in which case, those recipes and meal plans would also not help.
Bottom line: this book, filled with plenty of actual science, makes a strong case against wheat, and again, mostly for reasons other than its gluten content. You might want to cut yours down!
Click here to check out Wheat Belly, and see if skipping the wheat could be good for you!
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