Water Fluoridation, Atheroma, & More

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The 10almonds Team

Itโ€™s Q&A Day at 10almonds!

Have a question or a request? You can always hit โ€œreplyโ€ to any of our emails, or use the feedback widget at the bottom!

In cases where weโ€™ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future tooโ€”thereโ€™s always more to say!

As ever: if the question/request can be answered briefly, weโ€™ll do it here in our Q&A Thursday edition. If not, weโ€™ll make a main feature of it shortly afterwards!

So, no question/request too big or small ๐Ÿ˜Ž

โI watched a documentary recently on Fluoride in our drinking water & the dangers of it. Why are we poisoning our water?โž

This is a great question, and it certainly is controversial. It sounds like the documentary you watched was predominantly or entirely negative, but thereโ€™s a lot of science to back both sides of this, and itโ€™s not even that the science is contradictory (itโ€™s not). Itโ€™s that what differs is peopleโ€™s opinions about whether benefiting one thing is worth creating a risk to another, and that means looking at:

  • What is the risk associated with taking no action (error of omission)?
  • What is the risk associated with taking an action (error of commission)?

The whole topic is worth a main feature, but to summarize a few key points:

  • Water fluoridation is considered good for the prevention of dental cavities
  • Water fluoridation aims to deliver fluoride and doses far below dangerous levels
    • This requires working on consumer averages, though
  • โ€Where do we put the safety margins?โ€ is to some extent a subjective question, in terms of trading off one aspect of health for another
  • Too much fluoride can also be bad for the teeth (at least cosmetically, creating little white* spots)
  • Detractors of fluoride tend to mostly be worried about neurological harm
    • However, the doses in public water supplies are almost certainly far below the levels required to cause this harm.
      • That said, again this is working on consumer averages, though.
  • A good guide is: watch your teeth! Those white* spots will be โ€œthe canary in the coal mineโ€ of more serious harm that could potentially come from higher levels due to overconsumption of fluorine.

*Teeth are not supposed to be pure white. The โ€œHollywood smileโ€ is a lie. Teeth are supposed to be a slightly off-white, ivory color. Anything whiter than that is adding something else that shouldnโ€™t be there, or stripping something off that should be there.

โHow does your diet change clean out your arteries of the bad cholesterol?โž

Thereโ€™s good news and bad news here, and they can both be delivered with a one-word reply:

Slowly.

Or rather: whatโ€™s being cleaned out is mostly not the LDL (bad) cholesterol, but rather, the result of that.

When our diet is bad for cardiovascular health, our arteries get fatty deposits on their walls. Cholesterol gets stuck here too, but thatโ€™s not the main physical problem.

Our bodyโ€™s natural defenses come into action and try to clean it up, but they (for example macrophages, a kind of white blood cell that consumes invaders and then dies, before being recycled by the next part of the system) often get stuck and become part of the buildup (called atheroma), which can lead to atherosclerosis and (if calcium levels are high) hardening of the arteries, which is the worst end of this.

This can then require medical attention, precisely because the body canโ€™t remove it very wellโ€”especially if you are still maintaining a heart-unhealthy diet, thus continuing to add to the mess.

However, if it is not too bad yet, yes, a dietary change alone will reverse this process. Without new material being added to the arterial walls, the bodyโ€™s continual process of rejuvenation will eventually fix it, given time (free from things making it worse) and resources.

In fact, your arteries can be one of the quickest places for your body to make something better or worse, because the blood is the means by which the body moves most things (good or bad) around the body.

All the more reason to take extra care of it, since everything else depends on it!

You might also like our previous main feature:

All Things Heart Health

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  • Sprint vs HIIT, & Why Most Peopleโ€™s Cardio Isnโ€™t Working

    The 10almonds Team

    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.

    Cori Lefkowith, of “Strong at Every Age”, explains:

    Letโ€™s HIIT it!

    Cardio needs both ends of the effort spectrumโ€”mixing full-on sprints with walking (or equivalent gentle movement for other exercises) improves how efficiently our body burns fuel, builds endurance, and recovers.

    However, not all interval training is equal: different movements and work-to-rest ratios completely alter outcomes, affecting strength work, fat loss, and recovery differently.

    For example:

    • Spring Interval Training (SIT) uses short, explosive, 100%-effort intervals that improve our speed, power, recovery, and body composition while keeping our metabolism responsive.
    • High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) in general, however, is usually a little less than 100%, because working around 80% intensity can support fat-loss phases, longer circuits, and general conditioning when muscle building isnโ€™t the main priority.
    • Steady State Cardio (SSC), otherwise often simply called endurance training, also has its role, but long, continuous endurance work can become catabolic if overused, and as such, can break down muscle unless balanced with strength and sprint work.

    How to identify a true sprint: per Lefkowitz’s definition, if you can hold the intensity for more than 30 seconds, itโ€™s no longer a sprint; these sessions should stay short and high-quality.

    Remember also that rest is important too, as without enough rest, you train fatigue instead of explosiveness, slowing the benefits.

    It matters even more as we get older, because explosive training helps preserve lean muscle, balance hormones, improve reaction times, and counter menopausal shifts that encourage belly-fat storage specifically.

    As for when you do want to take it a little easier, that too has its place, since walking lowers stress hormones, improves recovery, regulates blood sugar, and supports fat-burning without adding more stress.

    In short, a mix of the above is needed, since high-intensity work is a positive stressor, but still stress; without walking and recovery, you’d soon hit diminishing returns.

    For more on all of this plus some admittedly superfluous visual demonstrations (but hey, it’s a video) enjoy:

    Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesnโ€™t Load Automatically!

    Want to learn more?

    You might also like:

    7 Kinds Of Rest When Sleep Is Not Enough

    Take care!

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  • How To Look After Your Health When Your Life Falls Apart

    The 10almonds Team

    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.

    Dr. Ruth Machin of โ€œWise Woman Wellbeingโ€ is here with advice from recent experience:

    Holding it together

    For Dr. Machin, grief after her fatherโ€™s death understandably disrupted her previously consistent habits like regular exercise, healthy eating, and 7โ€“8 hours of sleep, leading to poor sleep, reduced appetite, increased cravings, and less movement.

    These sorts of things tend to unravel together, because stress and poor sleep raise cortisol and adrenaline levels, increase the hunger hormone ghrelin, and impair decision-making, which in turn drives cravings for high-fat, sugar, and salty foods, thus causing multiple habits to collapse in a chain reaction.

    In other words, these habit lapses donโ€™t happen in isolation, but rather stack on top of each other, making it harder to restart, and turning a short disruption into a prolonged break from routines.

    • What to not do: the all-or-nothing approach fails because waiting for the โ€œright timeโ€ delays action indefinitely, while going all-in sets unrealistic standards that lead to overwhelm and burnout.
    • What to do instead: adopting a โ€œminimum viable routineโ€ reframes health as part of your identity by maintaining small, consistent actions even during difficult periods.

    The core principle here is that consistency matters more than perfection, especially during challenging times when maintaining anything is more valuable than aiming for ideal habits and ending up crashing and burning instead.

    So, she recommends to identify the smallest reasonably possible set of daily actions that support your physical and mental health, and keep them going regardless of circumstances.

    This is critical, because maintaining even minimal habits during hard times prevents complete resets, making it easier to return to fuller routines when life stabilizes.

    For more on all of this, enjoy:

    Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesnโ€™t Load Automatically!

    Want to learn more?

    You might also like:

    Take care!

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  • Cordyceps: Friend Or Foe?

    The 10almonds Team

    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.

    Cordyceps: friend or foe?

    Cordyceps is a famously frightening fungus. Itโ€™s the one responsible for โ€œzombie antsโ€ and other zombie creatures, and itโ€™s the basis for the existential threat to humanity in the TV show The Last of Us.

    Itโ€™s a parasitic fungus that controls the central and peripheral nervous systems of its host, slowly replacing the hostโ€™s body, as well as growing distinctive spines that erupt out of the hostโ€™s body. Taking over motor functions, it compels the host to do two main things, which are to eat more food, and climb to a position that will be good to release spores from.

    Fortunately, none of that matters to humans. Cordyceps does not (unlike in the TV show) affect humans that way.

    What does Cordyceps do in humans?

    Cordyceps (in various strains) is enjoyed as a health supplement, based on a long history of use in Traditional Chinese Medicine, and nowadays itโ€™s coming under a scientific spotlight too.

    The main health claims for it are:

    • Against inflammation
    • Against aging
    • Against cancer
    • For blood sugar management
    • For heart health
    • For exercise performance

    Sounds great! What does the science say?

    Thereโ€™s a lot more science for the first three (which are all closely related to each other, and often overlapping in mechanism and effect).

    So letโ€™s take a look:

    Against inflammation

    The science looks promising for this, but studies so far have either been in vitro (cell cultures in petri dishes), or else murine in vivo (mouse studies), for example:

    In summary: we can see that it has anti-inflammatory properties for mice and in the lab; weโ€™d love to see the results of studies done on humans, though. Also, while it has anti-inflammatory properties, it performed less well than commonly-prescribed anti-inflammatory drugs, for example:

    โC. militaris can modulate airway inflammation in asthma, but it is less effective than prednisolone or montelukast.โž

    Source: Effects of the immunomodulatory agent Cordyceps militaris on airway inflammation in a mouse asthma model

    Against aging

    Because examining the anti-aging effects of a substance requires measuring lifespans and repeating the experiment, anti-aging studies do not tend to be done on humans, because they would take lifetimes to perform. To this end, itโ€™s inconvenient, but not a criticism of Cordyceps, that studies have been either mouse studies (short lifespan, mammals like us) or fruit fly studies (very short lifespan, genetically surprisingly similar to us).

    The studies have had positive results, with typical lifespan extensions of 15โ€“20%:

    Against cancer

    Once again, the studies here have been in vitro, or murine in vivo. They do look good though:

    In vitro (human cell cultures in a lab):

    In vivo (mouse studies):

    Summary of these is: Cordyceps quite reliably inhibits tumor growth in vitro (human cell cultures) and in vivo (mouse studies). However, trials in human cancer patients are so far conspicuous by their absence.

    For blood sugar management

    Cordyceps appears to mimic the action of insulin, without triggering insulin sensitivity. For example:

    The anti-hyperglycemic activity of the fruiting body of Cordyceps in diabetic rats

    There were some other rat/mouse studies with similar results. No studies in humans yet.

    For heart health

    Cordyceps contains adenosine. You may remember that caffeine owes part of its stimulant effect to blocking adenosine, the hormone that makes us feel sleepy. So in this way, Cordyceps partially does the opposite of what caffeine does, and may be useful against arrhythmia:

    Cardiovascular protection of Cordyceps sinensis act partially via adenosine receptors

    For exercise performance

    A small (30 elderly participants) study found that Cordyceps supplementation improved VO2 max by 7% over the course of six weeks:

    Randomized double-blind placebo-controlled clinical trial and assessment of fermentation product of Cordyceps sinensis in enhancing aerobic capacity and respiratory function of the healthy elderly volunteers

    However, another small study (22 young athletes) failed to reproduce those results:

    Cordyceps Sinensis supplementation does not improve endurance exercise performance

    In summaryโ€ฆ

    Cordyceps almost certainly has anti-inflammation, anti-aging, and anti-cancer benefits.

    Cordyceps may have other benefits too, but the evidence is thinner on the ground for those, so far.

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  • Technology: Good Or Bad For Brain Health In Later Life?

    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.

    The 10almonds Team

    The word “screentime” isn’t usually associated with anything positive. We all use apps to try to limit it, we all read articles telling us about how it hurts teenagers’ sleep and damages toddlers’ development.

    Now, it could be that the tech isn’t really to blame. This writer certainly remembers staying up late as a child without modern tech to blame! Perhaps you (dear reader) did the same.

    The case against tech

    There are several main potential problems:

    However! We can mitigate each of those:

    • Engage with our technology actively, and thus make it a cognitively stimulating activity; this means doing things that challenge us cognitively. It doesn’t have to mean hard stuff, but it does have to be the kind of thing we couldn’t do while half-asleep.
    • Consciously decide our technology’s access to us. For example, this writer has her phone silenced 100% of the time, and only allows a very few apps to give even silent notifications, and there are set hours when her phone goes completely untouched.
    • Decide what cognitive abilities we don’t care to maintain. You may be thinking “but surely, all our cognitive abilities are important!”, but… Are they? Is it truly critical for you to be able to do mental arithmetic rather than use a calculator? Do you really need to know how to spell “necessary eligibility embarrassment privilege”? Do you really need to know (by heart) your friend’s phone number? And, maybe you do! We all lead different lives, after all. But it may well be that there’s some merit to be found in picking your battles. This writer with dyscalculia (numerical equivalent of dyslexia) will use a calculator to do very simple calculations sometimes, for me it’s better to not waste my time expending a lot of mental energy on simple sums that I might still get wrong, and use that time and energy on more productive things. Perhaps you have a similar area of cognitive function that it makes sense for you to offload.

    The case for tech

    Much more research has been done into how technology use affects developing brains, than on how technology use affects aging brains.

    But “less” is not “none”, so…

    Our technology enables our connection to other people. It’s often viewed as the opposite, “people don’t know how to have a conversation these days; they’re all on their phones”, but before that it was radios, before that, newspapers/magazines; there’s always been something.

    But, phones were originally designed to connect humans to other humans, and that remains their principal function, in various ways.

    See also: Effectiveness of Technology Interventions in Addressing Social Isolation, Connectedness, and Loneliness in Older Adults: Systematic Umbrella Review

    And this is critical, because a lack of social connection is one of the highest predictors of cognitive decline:

    See for example: Late-life social activity and subsequent risk of dementia and mild cognitive impairment

    Plus, even on the less social side of things, technology can also help us to stay independent for longer:

    How can technology support ageing in place in healthy older adults? A systematic review

    …which again, beyond the obvious immediate health-related quality of life differences, has an impact on maintenance of cognitive functions.

    See further: A meta-analysis of technology use and cognitive aging

    Want to learn more?

    Check out:

    How To Make Social Media Work For Your Mental Health

    Take care!

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  • The Science-Backed Anti-Inflammatory Diet for Beginners โ€“ by Dr. Yasmine Elamir & Dr. William Grist

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    The 10almonds Team

    We have written about how to eat to beat inflammation, but what we didn’t do is include 75 recipes and a plan for building up one’s culinary repertoire around those core dishes!

    That’s what this book does. It covers briefly the science of inflammation and anti-inflammatory diet, discusses experimental elimination diets (e.g. you eliminate likely culprits of triggering your inflammation, then reintroduce them one by one to see which it was), and ingredients likely to increase or decrease inflammation.

    The 75 recipes are good, and/but a caveat is “yes, one of the recipes is ketchup and another is sour cream” so it’s not exactly 75 mains.

    However! Where this book excels is in producing anti-inflammatory versions of commonly inflammatory dishes. That ketchup? Not sugary. The sour cream? Vegan. And so forth. We also see crispy roast potatoes, an array of desserts, and sections for popular holiday dishes too, so you will not need to be suddenly inflamed into the next dimension when it comes to festive eating.

    The recipes are what the title claims them to be, “science-backed anti-inflammatory”, and that is clearly the main criterion for their inclusion. They are not by default vegan, vegetarian, dairy-free, nut-free, gluten-free, etc. For this reason, all recipes are marked with such tags as “V, VG, DF, GF, EF, NF” etc as applicable.

    Bottom line: we’d consider this book more of a jumping-off point than a complete repertoire, but it’s a very good jumping-off point, and will definitely get you “up and running” (there’s a 21-day meal plan, for example).

    Click here to check out The Science-Back Anti-Inflammatory Diet for Beginners, and dial down the inflammation!

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  • How To Prevent Yeast Infections

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    The 10almonds Team

    Yeast infections arenโ€™t too tricky to cure, but theyโ€™re no fun at all, and so prevention is certainly best, and some of it may be counterintuitive!

    In other words, many people accidentally give themselves yeast infections by the very actions they take in trying to avoid such:

    Yeast is everywhere

    Well not truly everywhere, but pretty much everywhere that humans go, including our bodies.

    And yes, including there.

    Vulvovaginal candidiasis (yeast infection, or more accurately, yeast overgrowth) occurs when Candida abicans, which normally lives in the vagina alongside other microorganisms, overgrows and causes inflammation. Symptoms can include itching, burning, irritation, redness, swelling, thick white discharge, painful urination, and discomfort during sex.

    The biggest mistake many people make: most people know the vagina is self-cleaning, and yet still often forget that it does not need special vaginal washes and/or douching. These disrupt the normal vaginal environment and potentially increase problems, because they can wash out the protective bacteria (that are supposed to be there) while leaving C. albicans not only touched, but also now left there without competition for resources, making it easy for it to overgrow.

    In terms of what you should do instead, for the vulva (the outside parts), plain water is generally sufficient, especially when irritation is already present (that’s a cue for you to do less, not more). And inside the vagina, once again, simply does not need washing.

    Some people really struggle with this concept, so let’s put it this way: do you clean the backs of your eyelids, i.e. the inside part that rests flat against your eyeball? No? Why not? It’s because it washes itself! Inside the vagina is a very different microbiome, but is equally self-cleaning.

    One other thing: keep the vulva dry! Yeast thrives in moist environments. No, you do not need to keep your vagina itself dry, for obvious reasons. However, do take care to dry your vulvar skin after bathing and before putting on underwear, and avoid remaining in wet swimsuits after swimming or using a hot tub.

    For similar reasons, try to wear breathable clothing; cotton underwear is a reasonable option, particularly in humid conditions or if you sweat easily (which can also then be described as humid conditions, but we were initially talking about the weather). If you experience recurrent infections, consider limiting prolonged use of tight leggings and very tight jeans, which can trap moisture and increase friction and irritation.

    Writer’s additional observation on that note: I’m not the boss of what you do with yours, but personally, if it’s summer and I’m wearing an ankle-length skirt (I have a lovely one I’ve been wearing a lot lately), I see zero good reason for me to be wearing anything under it! Shorter skirts / shorter dresses, on the other hand, if I’m wearing those, then indeed cotton underwear is the way to go, I find.

    The final thing to avoid mentioned in the video, is antibiotics (unless truly necessary) because much like the washing/douching, antibiotics can reduce beneficial bacteria as well as harmful bacteria, potentially creating conditions that favor Candida overgrowth. Not the only reason that antibiotics should only be taken if it’s really important, but it’s sure on the list.

    We have some additional things we’d add to the list (see our “learn more”) section below!

    Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesnโ€™t Load Automatically!

    Want to learn more?

    You might also like:

    Take care!

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