Walnuts vs Cashews – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing walnuts to cashews, we picked the walnuts.
Why?
It was close! In terms of macros, walnuts have about 2x the fiber, while cashews have slightly more protein. In the specific category of fats, walnuts have more fat. Looking further into it: walnuts’ fats are mostly polyunsaturated, while cashews’ fats are mostly monounsaturated, both of which are considered healthy.
Notwithstanding being both high in calories, neither nut is associated with weight gain—largely because of their low glycemic indices (of which, walnuts enjoy the slightly lower GI, but both are low-GI foods)
When it comes to vitamins, walnuts have more of vitamins A, B2, B3 B6, B9, and C, while cashews have more of vitamins B1, B5, E, and K. Because of the variation in their respective margins of difference, this is at best a moderate victory for walnuts, though.
In the category of minerals, cashews get their day, as walnuts have more calcium and manganese, while cashews have more copper, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, and zinc.
In short: unless you’re allergic, we recommend enjoying both of these nuts (and others) for a full range of benefits. However, if you’re going to pick one, walnuts win the day.
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
Why You Should Diversify Your Nuts
Take care!
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Cold Medicines & Heart Health
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Cold Medicines & Heart Health
In the wake of many decongestants disappearing from a lot of shelves after a common active ingredient being declared useless*, you may find yourself considering alternative decongestants at this time of year.
*In case you missed it:
It doesn’t seem to be dangerous, by the way, just also not effective:
FDA Panel Says Common OTC Decongestant, Phenylephrine, Is Useless
Good for your nose, bad for your heart?
With products based on phenylephrine out of the running, products based on pseudoephedrine, a competing drug, are enjoying a surge in popularity.
Good news: pseudoephedrine works!
Bad news: pseudoephedrine works because it is a vasoconstrictor, and that vasoconstriction reduces nasal swelling. That same vasoconstriction also raises overall blood pressure, potentially dangerously, depending on an assortment of other conditions you might have.
Further reading: Can decongestants spike your blood pressure? What to know about hypertension and cold medicine
Who’s at risk?
The warning label, unread by many, reads:
❝Do not use this product if you have heart disease, high blood pressure, thyroid disease, diabetes, or difficulty in urination due to enlargement of the prostate gland, unless directed by a doctor❞
Source: Harvard Health | Don’t let decongestants squeeze your heart
What are the other options?
The same source as above recommends antihistamines as an option to be considered, citing:
❝Antihistamines such as […] cetirizine (Zyrtec) and loratadine (Claritin) can help with a stuffy nose and are safe for the heart.❞
But we’d be remiss not to mention drug-free options too, for example:
- Saline rinse with a neti pot or similar
- Use of a humidifier in your house/room
- Steam inhalation, with or without eucalyptus etc
See also: Inhaled Eucalyptus’s Immunomodulatory and Antimicrobial Effects
Take care!
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How Likely Are You To Live To 100?
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How much hope can we reasonably have of reaching 100?
Yesterday, we asked you: assuming a good Health-Related Quality of Life (HRQoL), how much longer do you hope to live?
We got the above-depicted, below-described, set of responses:
- A little over 38% of respondents hope to live another 11–20 years
- A little over 31% hope to live another 31–40 years
- A little over 7% will be content to make it to the next decade
- One (1) respondent hopes to live longer than an additional 100 years
This is interesting when we put it against our graph of how old our subscribers are:
…because it corresponds inversely, right down to the gap/dent in the 40s. And—we may hypothesize—that one person under 18 who hopes to live to 120, perhaps.
This suggests that optimism remains more or less constant, with just a few wobbles that would probably be un-wobbled with a larger sample size.
In other words: most of our education-minded, health-conscious subscriber-base hope to make it to the age of 90-something, while for the most part feeling that 100+ is overly optimistic.
Writer’s anecdote: once upon a time, I was at a longevity conference in Brussels, and a speaker did a similar survey, but by show of hands. He started low by asking “put your hands up if you want to live at least a few more minutes”. I did so, with an urgency that made him laugh, and say “Don’t worry; I don’t have a gun hidden up here!”
Conjecture aside… What does the science say about our optimism?
First of all, a quick recap…
To not give you the same information twice, let’s note we did an “aging mythbusting” piece already covering:
- Aging is inevitable: True or False?
- Aging is, and always will be, unstoppable: True or False?
- We can slow aging: True or False?
- It’s too early to worry about… / It’s too late to do anything about… True or False?
- We can halt aging: True or False?
- We can reverse aging: True or False?
- But those aren’t really being younger, we’ll still die when our time is up: True or False?
You can read the answers to all of those here:
Age & Aging: What Can (And Can’t) We Do About It?
Now, onwards…
It is unreasonable to expect to live past 100: True or False?
True or False, depending on your own circumstances.
First, external circumstances: the modal average person in Hong Kong is currently in their 50s and can expect to live into their late 80s, while the modal average person in Gaza is 14 and may not expect to make it to 15 right now.
To avoid extremes, let’s look at the US, where the modal average person is currently in their 30s and can expect to live into their 70s:
United States Mortality Database
Now, before that unduly worries our many readers already in their 70s…
Next, personal circumstances: not just your health, but your socioeconomic standing. And in the US, one of the biggest factors is the kind of health insurance one has:
SOA Research Institute | Life Expectancy Calculator 2021
You may note that the above source puts all groups into a life expectancy in the 80s—whereas the previous source gave 70s.
Why is this? It’s because the SOA, whose primary job is calculating life insurance risks, is working from a sample of people who have, or are applying for, life insurance. So it misses out many people who die younger without such.
New advances in medical technology are helping people to live longer: True or False?
True, assuming access to those. Our subscribers are mostly in North America, and have an economic position that affords good access to healthcare. But beware…
On the one hand:
The number of people who live past the age of 100 has been on the rise for decades
On the other hand:
The average life expectancy in the U.S. has been on the decline for three consecutive years
COVID is, of course, largely to blame for that, though:
❝The decline of 1.8 years in life expectancy was primarily due to increases in mortality from COVID-19 (61.2% of the negative contribution).
The decline in life expectancy would have been even greater if not for the offsetting effects of decreases in mortality due to cancer (43.1%)❞
Source: National Vital Statistics Reports
The US stats are applicable to Canada, the UK, and Australia: True or False?
False: it’s not quite so universal. Differences in healthcare systems will account for a lot, but there are other factors too:
- Life expectancy in Canada fell for the 3rd year in a row. What’s happening?
- UK life expectancy lagging behind rest of G7 except the US
- Australians are living longer but what does it take to reach 100 years old?
Here’s an interesting (UK-based) tool that calculates not just your life expectancy, but also gives the odds of living to various ages (e.g. this writer was given odds of living to 87, 96, 100).
Check yours here:
Office of National Statistics | Life Expectancy Calculator
To finish on a cheery note…
Data from Italian centenarians suggests a “mortality plateau”:
❝The risk of dying leveled off in people 105 and older, the team reports online today in Science.
That means a 106-year-old has the same probability of living to 107 as a 111-year-old does of living to 112.
Furthermore, when the researchers broke down the data by the subjects’ year of birth, they noticed that over time, more people appear to be reaching age 105.❞
Pop-sci source: Once you hit this age, aging appears to stop
Actual paper: The plateau of human mortality: demography of longevity pioneers
Take care!
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The Spectrum of Hope – by Dr. Gayatri Devi
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We’ve written before about Dr. Devi’s work (See: “Alzheimer’s: The Bad News And The Good“) but she has plenty more to say than we could fit in an article.
The book is written for patients, family/carers, and clinicians—without getting deep into the science, which it is assumed clinicians will know. the general style of the book is pop-science, and it’s more about addressing the misconceptions around Alzheimer’s, rather than focusing on neurological features such as beta amyloid plaques and tau proteins and the like.
Dr. Devi explains a lot about the experience of Alzheimer’s—what to expect, or rather, what to know about in advance. Because, as she explains, there are a lot of different manifestations of Alzheimer’s that are all lumped under the same umbrella.
This means that a person could have negligible memory but perfect language and reasoning skills, or the other way around, or some other combination of symptoms showing up or not.
Which means that any plan for managing one’s Alzheimer’s needs to be adaptable and personalized, which is something Dr. Devi talks us through, too.
Bottom line: if you are a loved one has Alzheimer’s, or you just like to be prepared, this is a great book to prepare anybody for just that.
Click here to check out The Spectrum of Hope, and hold onto that hope!
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Ridged Nails: What Are They Telling You?
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Dr. Yaseen Arsalan, a Doctor of Pharmacy, has advice on the “nutraceutical” side of things:
Onychorrhexis
Sounds like the name of a dinosaur, but it’s actually the condition that creates the vertical ridges that sometimes appear on nails. It’s especially likely in the case of thinner nails, and/or certain nutritional deficiencies. Overuse of certain chemicals (including nail polish remover, hair products that get on your hands a lot, and cleaning fluids) can also cause it. It can also be worsened by various conditions, including eczema, psoriasis, hypothyroidism, anemia, and amyloidosis, but it won’t usually be outright caused by those alone.
There are two main kinds of ridges on nails:
- Vertical ridges: associated with hypothyroidism, anemia, and aging. Often an indicator of low iron.
- Horizontal ridges (Beau’s lines): caused by interrupted nail growth, brute force trauma, chemotherapy, acrylic nails, and gel nail polishes. Can also be an indicator of low zinc.
There are an assortment of medical treatments available, which Dr. Arsalan discusses in the video, but for home remedy treatment, he recommends:
- Nail-strengthening creams (look for coconut oil, shea butter, beeswax, vitamin E)
- Hydration (this is about overall hydration e.g. water intake)
- Careful nail trimming (fingernails with a curved shape and toenails straight across)
- Nail ridge filler (he recommends the brand Barrielle, for not containing formaldehyde or formalin)
- Moisturization (with cuticle oil or hand creams, because that hydration we talked about earlier is important, and we want it to stay inside the nail)
For more on those things, plus the medical treatments plus other “how to avoid this” measures, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
- The Counterintuitive Dos and Don’ts of Nail Health
- Regular Nail Polish vs Gel Nail Polish – Which is Healthier?
Take care!
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The 5 Resets – by Dr. Aditi Nerurkar
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What this book isn’t: an advice to go on a relaxing meditation retreat, or something like that.
What this is: a science-based guide to what actually works.
There’s no need to be mysterious, so we’ll mention that the titular “5 resets” are:
- What matters most
- Quiet in a noisy world
- Leveraging the brain-body connection
- Coming up for air (regaining perspective)
- Bringing your best self forward
All of these are things we can easily lose sight of in the hustle and bustle of daily life, so having a system for keeping them on track can make a huge difference!
The style is personable and accessible, while providing a lot of strongly science-backed tips and tricks along the way.
Bottom line: if life gets away from you a little too often for comfort, this book can help you keep on top of things with a lot less stress.
Click here to check out “The 5 Resets”, and take control with conscious calm!
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Semaglutide for Weight Loss?
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Semaglutide for weight loss?
Semaglutide is the new kid on the weight-loss block, but it’s looking promising (with some caveats!).
Most popularly by brand names Ozempic and Wegovy, it was first trialled to help diabetics*, and is now sought-after by the rest of the population too. So far, only Wegovy is FDA-approved for weight loss. It contains more semaglutide than Ozempic, and was developed specifically for weight loss, rather than for diabetes.
*Specifically: diabetics with type 2 diabetes. Because it works by helping the pancreas to make insulin, it’s of no help whatsoever to T1D folks, sadly. If you’re T1D and reading this though, today’s book of the day is for you!
First things first: does it work as marketed for diabetes?
It does! At a cost: a very common side effect is gastrointestinal problems—same as for tirzepatide, which (like semaglutide) is a GLP-1 agonist, meaning it works the same way. Here’s how they measure up:
- Head-to-head study: Effects of subcutaneous tirzepatide versus placebo or semaglutide on pancreatic islet function and insulin sensitivity in adults with type 2 diabetes
- Head-to-head systematic review: Semaglutide for the treatment of type 2 Diabetes Mellitus: A systematic review and network meta-analysis of safety and efficacy outcomes
As you can see, both of them work wonders for pancreatic function and insulin sensitivity!
And, both of them were quite unpleasant for around 20% of participants:
❝Tirzepatide, oral and SC semaglutide has a favourable efficacy in treating T2DM. Gastrointestinal adverse events were highly recorded in tirzepatide, oral and SC semaglutide groups.❞
What about for weight loss, if not diabetic?
It works just the same! With just the same likelihood of gastro-intestinal unpleasantries, though. There’s a very good study that was done with 1,961 overweight adults; here it is:
Once-Weekly Semaglutide in Adults with Overweight or Obesity
The most interesting things here are the positive results and the side effects:
❝The mean change in body weight from baseline to week 68 was −14.9% in the semaglutide group as compared with −2.4% with placebo, for an estimated treatment difference of −12.4 percentage points (95% confidence interval [CI], −13.4 to −11.5; P<0.001).❞
In other words: if you take this, you’re almost certainly going to get something like 6x better weight loss results than doing the same thing without it.
❝Nausea and diarrhea were the most common adverse events with semaglutide; they were typically transient and mild-to-moderate in severity and subsided with time. More participants in the semaglutide group than in the placebo group discontinued treatment owing to gastrointestinal events (59 [4.5%] vs. 5 [0.8%])❞
~ ibid.
In other words: you have about a 3% chance of having unpleasant enough side effects that you don’t want to continue treatment (contrast this with the 20%ish chance of unpleasant side effects of any extent)!
Any other downsides we should know about?
If you stop taking it, weight regain is likely. For example, a participant in one of the above-mentioned studies who lost 22% of her body weight with the drug’s help, says:
❝Now that I am no longer taking the drug, unfortunately, my weight is returning to what it used to be. It felt effortless losing weight while on the trial, but now it has gone back to feeling like a constant battle with food. I hope that, if the drug can be approved for people like me, my [doctor] will be able to prescribe the drug for me in the future.❞
~ Jan, a trial participant at UCLH
Is it injection-only, or is there an oral option?
An oral option exists, but (so far) is on the market only in the form of Rybelsus, another (slightly older) drug containing semaglutide, and it’s (so far) only FDA-approved for diabetes, not for weight loss. See:
A new era for oral peptides: SNAC and the development of oral semaglutide for the treatment of type 2 diabetes ← for the science
FDA approves first oral GLP-1 treatment for type 2 diabetes ← For the FDA statement
Where can I get these?
Availability and prescribing regulations vary by country (because the FDA’s authority stops at the US borders), but here is the website for each of them if you’d like to learn more / consider if they might help you:
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