What Weston Price Got Right (And Wrong)
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.
Weston Price: What Stood The Test of Time?
This is Dr. Weston Price, a dentist. You may guess from the photo, or perhaps already knew, his work is not new in 2023. We usually feature current health experts here, but we’re taking a day to do a blast from the past, because his ideas endure today, and inform a lot of people’s health views. So, he’s a good one to at least know about.
What was his deal?
Dr. Price (1870–1948) wanted to study focal infection theory—the idea that repairing root canals allowed bacterial infections that caused everything from heart disease to arthritis. His solution was that the teeth should be extracted instead.
This theory was popular in the 1920s, was challenged in the 1930s, ignored in the 1940s (the world was a bit busy), and by broad medical consensus anyway, rejected in the 1950s. But, while it was being challenged in the 1930s, Dr. Price decided to find more evidence for its support.
The result was his famous world tour of peoples living traditional lifestyles without the influence of “modern” diet. His findings, and the conclusions he drew from them, extended to far more than just dental health.
What did he find?
Dr. Price found that people living traditional lifestyles, with their traditional diets based on locally-sourced foods, had much better overall health. Of course, he was a dentist and not a general practitioner, so aside from examining their teeth, he largely relied on self-reported diagnoses of illness, or lack thereof.
In short: he found that people in places without modern medical institutions had fewer diagnoses of disease. From this, he concluded that incidence of disease was much lower.
There was also an unexamined element of survivorship bias—an undiagnosed disease is more likely to be fatal, and he questioned only living people, which skewed the stats rather. Nor did he examine infant mortality rate nor adult life expectancy, both of which were not great.
Was it all useless, then?
Actually no! He did hit upon some observations that have stood the test of time:
- He correctly concluded that modern diets with sugar and white flour were ruinous to the health.
- He correctly concluded that locally-sourced food, and grass-fed in the case of pastoral farming, tended to have much more nutritional value than the mass-produced results of intensive farming.
- He correctly concluded that many modern preservation methods robbed foods of their nutrients.
- He correctly concluded that many grains and seeds are more nutritions when fermented/soaked/sprouted.
About that “locally-sourced food”: the reason locally-sourced food tends to be more nutritious is that it has required less in the way of preservation for a long trip around the world, and will also tend to be fresher.
On the other hand, this does mean a lot of the foods that Dr. Price recommends are very much subject to availability. It may well be true that the Inuit people do not eat a lot of fruit and veg (which mostly do not grow there), but if you live in Nevada, maybe locally-sourced whale fat is just as difficult to find.
One person’s “this fatty organ meat contains the vitamin C we need” may be another person’s “that’s great; I have an apple tree in my garden though”.
Want to learn more?
Dr. Price’s most influential work is his magnum opus, “Nutrition and Physical Degeneration”. It’s a fascinating book in its historical context, but do be warned, it was written by a rich white man in 1939 and the writing is as racist as you might expect. Even when making favourable comparisons, the tone is very much “and here is what these savages are doing well”.
If you don’t fancy reading all that, here are two other sources about Weston Price’s work and conclusions, presented for balance:
- The Weston A. Price Foundation (Official Website)
- Weston Price’s Appalling Legacy (Science-Based Medicine.org)
Enjoy!
Don’t Forget…
Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!
Recommended
Learn to Age Gracefully
Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:
-
Reduce Your Stroke Risk
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.
❝Each year in the U.S., over half a million people have a first stroke; however, up to 80% of strokes may be preventable.❞
~ American Stroke Association
Source: New guideline: Preventing a first stroke may be possible with screening, lifestyle changes
So, what should we do?
Some of the risk factors are unavoidable or not usefully avoidable, like genetic predispositions and old age, respectively (i.e. it is possible to avoid old age—by dying young, which is not a good approach).
Some of the risk factors are avoidable. Let’s look at the most obvious first:
You cannot drink to your good health
While overall, the World Health Organization has declared that “the only safe amount of alcohol is zero”, when it comes to stroke risk specifically, it seems that low consumption is not associated with stroke, while moderate to high consumption is associated with a commensurately increased risk of stroke:
Alcohol Intake as a Risk Factor for Acute Stroke
Note: there are some studies out there that say that a low to moderate consumption may decrease the risk compared to zero consumption. However, any such study that this writer has seen has had the methodological flaw of not addressing why those who do not drink alcohol, do not drink it. In many cases, someone who drinks no alcohol at all does so because either a) it would cause problems with some medication(s) they are taking, or b) they used to drink heavily, and quit. In either case, their reasons for not drinking alcohol may themselves be reasons for an increased stroke risk—not the lack of alcohol itself.
Smoke now = stroke later
This one is straightforward; smoking is bad for pretty much everything, and that includes stroke risk, as it’s bad for your heart and brain both, increasing stroke risk by 200–400%:
Smoking and stroke: the more you smoke the more you stroke
So, the advice here of course is: don’t smoke
Diet matters
The American Stroke Association’s guidelines recommend, just for a change, the Mediterranean Diet. This does not mean just whatever is eaten in the Mediterranean region though, and there are specifically foods that are included and excluded, and the ratios matter, so here’s a run-down of what the Mediterranean Diet does and doesn’t include:
The Mediterranean Diet: What Is It Good For? ← what isn’t it good for?!
You can outrun stroke
Or out-walk it; that’s fine too. Most important here is frequency of exercise, more than intensity. So basically, getting those 150 minutes moderate exercise per week as a minimum.
See also: The Doctor Who Wants Us To Exercise Less & Move More
Which is good, because it means we can get a lot of exercise in that doesn’t feel like “having to do” exercise, for example:
Do You Love To Go To The Gym? No? Enjoy These “No-Exercise Exercises”!
Your brain needs downtime too
Your brain (and your heart) both need you to get good regular sleep:
Sleep Disorders in Stroke: An Update on Management
We sometimes say that “what’s good for your heart is good for your brain” (because the heart feeds the brain, and also ultimately clears away detritus), and that’s true here too, so we might also want to prioritize sleep regularity over other factors, even over duration:
How Regularity Of Sleep Can Be Even More Important Than Duration ← this is about adverse cardiovascular events, including ischemic stroke
Keep on top of your blood pressure
High blood pressure is a very modifiable risk factor for stroke. Taking care of the above things will generally take care of this, especially the DASH variation of the Mediterranean diet:
Hypertension: Factors Far More Relevant Than Salt
However, it’s still important to actually check your blood pressure regularly, because sometimes an unexpected extra factor can pop up for no obvious reason. As a bonus, you can do this improved version of the usual blood pressure test, still using just a blood pressure cuff:
Try This At Home: ABI Test For Clogged Arteries
Consider GLP-1 receptor agonists (or…)
GLP-1 receptor agonists (like Ozempic et al.) seem to have cardioprotective and neuroprotective (thus: anti-stroke) activity independent of their weight loss benefits:
Of course, GLP-1 RAs aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, and they do have their downsides (including availability, cost, and the fact benefits reverse themselves if you stop taking them), so if you want a similar effect from a natural approach, there are some foods that work on the body’s incretin responses in the same way as GLP-1 RAs do:
5 Foods That Naturally Mimic The “Ozempic Effect”
Better to know sooner rather than too late
Rather than waiting until one half of our face is drooping to know that there was a stroke risk, here are things to watch out for to know about it before it’s too late:
6 Signs Of Stroke (One Month In Advance)
Take care!
Share This Post
-
Qigong: A Breath Of Fresh Air?
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.
Qigong: Breathing Is Good (Magic Remains Unverified)
In Tuesday’s newsletter, we asked you for your opinions of qigong, and got the above-depicted, below-described, set of responses:
- About 55% said “Qigong is just breathing, but breathing exercises are good for the health”
- About 41% said “Qigong helps regulate our qi and thus imbue us with healthy vitality”
- One (1) person said “Qigong is a mystical waste of time and any benefits are just placebo”
The sample size was a little low for this one, but the results were quite clearly favorable, one way or another.
So what does the science say?
Qigong is just breathing: True or False?
True or False, depending on how we want to define it—because qigong ranges in its presentation from indeed “just breathing exercises”, to “breathing exercises with visualization” to “special breathing exercises with visualization that have to be exactly this way, with these hand and sometimes body movements also, which also must be just right”, to far more complex definitions that involve qi by various mystical definitions, and/or an appeal to a scientific analog of qi; often some kind of bioelectrical field or such.
There is, it must be said, no good quality evidence for the existence of qi.
Writer’s note, lest 41% of you want my head now: I’ve been practicing qigong and related arts for about 30 years and find such to be of great merit. This personal experience and understanding does not, however, change the state of affairs when it comes to the availability (or rather, the lack) of high quality clinical evidence to point to.
Which is not to say there is no clinical evidence, for example:
Acute Physiological and Psychological Effects of Qigong Exercise in Older Practitioners
…found that qigong indeed increased meridian electrical conductance!
Except… Electrical conductance is measured with galvanic skin responses, which increase with sweat. But don’t worry, to control for that, they asked participants to dry themselves with a towel. Unfortunately, this overlooks the fact that a) more sweat can come where that came from, because the body will continue until it is satisfied of adequate homeostasis, and b) drying oneself with a towel will remove the moisture better than it’ll remove the salts from the skin—bearing in mind that it’s mostly the salts, rather than the moisture itself, that improve the conductivity (pure distilled water does conduct electricity, but not very well).
In other words, this was shoddy methodology. How did it pass peer review? Well, here’s an insight into that journal’s peer review process…
❝The peer-review system of EBCAM is farcical: potential authors who send their submissions to EBCAM are invited to suggest their preferred reviewers who subsequently are almost invariably appointed to do the job. It goes without saying that such a system is prone to all sorts of serious failures; in fact, this is not peer-review at all, in my opinion, it is an unethical sham.❞
~ Dr. Edzard Ernst, a founding editor of EBCAM (he since left, and decries what has happened to it since)
One of the other key problems is: how does one test qigong against placebo?
Scientists have looked into this question, and their answers have thus far been unsatisfying, and generally to the tune of the true-but-unhelpful statement that “future research needs to be better”:
Problems of scientific methodology related to placebo control in Qigong studies: A systematic review
Most studies into qigong are interventional studies, that is to say, they measure people’s metrics (for example, blood pressure, heart rate, maybe immune function biomarkers, sleep quality metrics of various kinds, subjective reports of stress levels, physical biomarkers of stress levels, things like that), then do a course of qigong (perhaps 6 weeks, for example), then measure them again, and see if the course of qigong improved things.
This almost always results in an improvement when looking at the before-and-after, but it says nothing for whether the benefits were purely placebo.
We did find one study that claimed to be placebo-controlled:
…but upon reading the paper itself carefully, it turned out that while the experimental group did qigong, the control group did a reading exercise. Which is… Saying how well qigong performs vs reading (qigong did outperform reading, for the record), but nothing for how well it performs vs placebo, because reading isn’t a remotely credible placebo.
See also: Placebo Effect: Making Things Work Since… Well, A Very Long Time Ago ← this one explains a lot about how placebo effect does work
Qigong is a mystical waste of time: True or False?
False! This one we can answer easily. Interventional studies invariably find it does help, and the fact remains that even if placebo is its primary mechanism of action, it is of benefit and therefore not a waste of time.
Which is not to say that placebo is its only, or even necessarily primary, mechanism of action.
Even from a purely empirical evidence-based medicine point of view, qigong is at the very least breathing exercises plus (usually) some low-impact body movement. Those are already two things that can be looked at, mechanistic processes pointed to, and declarations confidently made of “this is an activity that’s beneficial for health”.
See for example:
- Effects of Qigong practice in office workers with chronic non-specific low back pain: A randomized control trial
- Qigong for the Prevention, Treatment, and Rehabilitation of COVID-19 Infection in Older Adults
- Impact of Medical Qigong on quality of life, fatigue, mood and inflammation in cancer patients: a randomized controlled trial
…and those are all from respectable journals with meaningful peer review processes.
None of them are placebo-controlled, because there is no real option of “and group B will only be tricked into believing they are doing deep breathing exercises with low-impact movements”; that’s impossible.
But! They each show how doing qigong reliably outperforms not doing qigong for various measurable metrics of health.
And, we chose examples with physical symptoms and where possible empirically measurable outcomes (such as COVID-19 infection levels, or inflammatory responses); there are reams of studies showings qigong improves purely subjective wellbeing—but the latter could probably be claimed for any enjoyable activity, whereas changes in inflammatory biomarkers, not such much.
In short: for most people, it indeed reliably helps with many things. And importantly, it has no particular risks associated with it, and it’s almost universally framed as a complementary therapy rather than an alternative therapy.
This is critical, because it means that whereas someone may hold off on taking evidence-based medicines while trying out (for example) homeopathy, few people are likely to hold off on other treatments while trying out qigong—since it’s being viewed as a helper rather than a Hail-Mary.
Want to read more about qigong?
Here’s the NIH’s National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health has to say. It cites a lot of poor quality science, but it does mention when the science it’s citing is of poor quality, and over all gives quite a rounded view:
Enjoy!
Share This Post
-
Fasting Cancer – by Dr. Valter Longo
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.
We’ve previously reviewed Dr. Longo’s “The Longevity Diet”, and whereas that one was about eating, this one is (superficially, at least) about not eating. Nor is this any kind of dissonance, because, in fact, it’s important to do both!
That said, he discusses not just fasting per se, but also the use of a personalized fast-mimicking diet, to accomplish the same goal of not overloading the metabolism—as overloading the metabolism results in metabolic disease, and cancer is, ultimately, a metabolic disease of immune dysfunction with genetic disorder*—which makes for quite a deadly trifecta.
*not in the sense of “hereditary”, though certainly genes can influence cancer risk, but rather, in the sense of “your gene-copying process becomes disordered”.
The first three chapters (after the introduction, which we’ll comment on shortly) are devoted to explaining the principles at hand:
- Fasting cancer while feeding patients
- Genes, aging, and cancer
- Fasting, nutrition, and physical activity in cancer prevention
In those chapters, he details a lot of the science for exactly how and why it is possible to “feed the patient and starve the cancer” at the same time.
After that, the rest of the book—another nine chapters, not counting appendices etc—are given over to fasting and nutrition in the context of nine main types of cancer, one chapter per type. These are not hyperspecific, though, and are rather categorizations, such as “blood cancers”, and “gynecological cancers” and so forth. It’s comprehensive, and while it could be argued that it may mean chapters feel irrelevant to some people (à la “I have never smoked and have no pressing concern about my lung cancer risk” etc), the reality is that it’s good to know how to avoid them all, because if nothing else, it’d be super embarrassing to get a cancer you “thought you couldn’t get”. So, it’s honestly worth the time to read each chapter.
In the category of criticism, he did open the introduction with a handful of anecdotes to defend the consumption of (well-established group 1 carcinogens) red meat and alcohol as “secondary concerns that might not be such a big deal”, even discussing how surprised his colleagues in the field are that he has this view. Suffice it to say, it’s contrary to the overwhelming body of evidence, and reads suspiciously like a man who simply doesn’t want to give up his steak and wine despite his own longevity diet forswearing them.
The style is self-indulgently autobiographical and very complimentary, and (in this reviewer’s opinion) it can be tedious to wade through that to get to the science, but at the end of the day, his self-accolades might be needless fluff, but they don’t actually remove anything from the science in question.
Bottom line: as you can see, there are good and bad things to say about this book, but the information contained in the good makes it well worth reading through the stylistically questionable to get it.
Click here to check out Fasting Cancer, and starve cancer cells while nourishing your healthy ones!
Share This Post
Related Posts
-
The Meds That Impair Decision-Making
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.
Impairment to cognitive function is often comorbid with Parkinson’s disease. That is to say: it’s not a symptom of Parkinson’s, but it often occurs in the same people. This may seem natural: after all, both are strongly associated with aging.
However, recent (last month, at time of writing) research has brought to light a very specific way in which medication for Parkinson’s may impair the ability to make sound decisions.
Obviously, this is a big deal, because it can affect healthcare decisions, financial decisions, and more—greatly impacting quality of life.
See also: Age-related differences in financial decision-making and social influence
(in which older people were found more likely to be influenced by the impulsive financial preferences of others than their younger counterparts, when other factors are controlled for)
As for how this pans out when it comes to Parkinson’s meds…
Pramipexole (PPX)
This drug can, due to an overlap in molecular shape, mimic dopamine in the brains of people who don’t have enough—such as those with Parkinson’s disease. This (as you might expect) helps alleviate Parkinson’s symptoms.
However, researchers found that mice treated with PPX and given a touch-screen based gambling game picked the high-risk, high reward option much more often. In the hopes of winning strawberry milkshake (the reward), they got themselves subjected to a lot of blindingly-bright flashing lights (the risk, to which untreated mice were much more averse, as this is very stressful for a mouse).
You may be wondering: did the mice have Parkinson’s?
The answer: kind of; they had been subjected to injections with 6-hydroxydopamine, which damages dopamine-producing neurons similarly to Parkinson’s.
This result was somewhat surprising, because one would expect that a mouse whose depleted dopamine was being mimicked by a stand-in (thus, doing much of the job of dopamine) would be less swayed by the allure of gambling (a high-dopamine activity), since gambling is typically most attractive to those who are desperate to find a crumb of dopamine somewhere.
They did find out why this happened, by the way, the PPX hyperactivated the external globus pallidus (also called GPe, and notwithstanding the name, this is located deep inside the brain). Chemically inhibiting this area of the brain reduced the risk-taking activity of the mice.
This has important implications for Parkinson’s patients, because:
- on an individual level, it means this is a side effect of PPX to be aware of
- on a research-and-development level, it means drugs need to be developed that specifically target the GPe, to avoid/mitigate this side effect.
You can read the study in full here:
Don’t want to get Parkinson’s in the first place?
While nothing is a magic bullet, there are things that can greatly increase or decrease Parkinson’s risk. Here’s a big one, as found recently (last week, at the time of writing):
Air Pollution and Parkinson’s Disease in a Population-Based Study
Also: knowing about its onset sooner rather than later is scary, but beneficial. So, with that in mind…
Recognize The Early Symptoms Of Parkinson’s Disease
Finally, because Parkinson’s disease is theorized to be caused by a dysfunction of alpha-synuclein clearance (much like the dysfunction of beta-amyloid clearance, in the case of Alzheimer’s disease), this means that having a healthy glymphatic system (glial cells doing the same clean-up job as the lymphatic system, but in the brain) is critical:
How To Clean Your Brain (Glymphatic Health Primer)
Take care!
Don’t Forget…
Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!
Learn to Age Gracefully
Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:
-
Limitless Expanded Edition – by Jim Kwik
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.
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!
Don’t Forget…
Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!
Learn to Age Gracefully
Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:
-
These Top Few Things Make The Biggest Difference To Health
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 Best Few Interventions For The Best Health
Writer’s note: I was going to do something completely different for today (so that can go out another week now), but when reflecting on my own “what should I focus on in the new year?” (in terms of my own personal health goals and such) it occured to me that I should look back on the year’s articles, to take our own advice myself, and see what most important things I should make sure to focus on.
In so doing for myself, it occured to me that you, our subscribers who like condensed information and simple interventions for big positive effects, might also find value in a similar once-over. And so, today’s main feature was born!
Sometimes at 10almonds we talk about “those five things that affect everything”. They are:
- Good diet
- Good exercise
- Good sleep
- Not drinking
- Not smoking
If we were to add a sixth in terms of things that make a huge difference, it would be “manage stress effectively” and a seventh, beyond the scope of our newsletter, would be “don’t be socioeconomically disadvantaged” (e.g. poor, and/or part of some disprivileged minority group).
But as for those five we listed, it still leaves the question: what are the few most effective things we can do to improve them? Where can we invest our time/energy/effort for greatest effect?
Good diet
Best current science consistently recommends the Mediterranean Diet:
The Mediterranean Diet: What Is It Good For?
But it can be tweaked for specific desired health considerations:
Four Ways To Upgrade The Mediterranean Diet
Other most-effective dietary tweaks that impact a lot of other areas of health include looking after your gut health and looking after your blood sugars:
Making Friends With Your Gut (You Can Thank Us Later)
and
“Let Them Eat Cake”, She Said (10 Ways To Balance Blood Sugars)
Good exercise
Most exercise is good, but two of the most beneficial things that are (for most people) easy to implement are walking, and High-Intensity Interval Training:
How To Do HIIT (Without Wrecking Your Body)
Good sleep
This means quality and quantity! We cannot skimp on either and expect good health:
Why You Probably Need More Sleep
and as for quality,
The Head-To-Head Of Google and Apple’s Top Apps For Getting Your Head Down
Not drinking
According to the World Health Organization, the only safe amount of alcohol is zero.
See also:
Can We Drink To Good Health? (e.g. Red Wine & Heart Health)
and
Not smoking
We haven’t done a main feature on this! It’s probably not really necessary, as it’s not very contentious to say “smoking is bad for everything”.
WHO | Tobacco kills up to half its users who don’t quit
However, as a side-note, while cannabis is generally recognised as not as harmful as tobacco-based products, it has some fairly major drawbacks too. For some people, the benefits (e.g. pain relief) may outweigh the risks, though:
Final thoughts
Not sure where to start? We suggest this order of priorities, unless you have a major health condition that makes something else a higher priority:
- If you smoke, stop
- If you drink, reduce, or ideally stop
- Improve your diet
About that diet…
- Worry less about what to exclude, and instead focus on adding more variety of fruit/veg
- See also: Level-Up Your Fiber Intake! (Without Difficulty Or Discomfort)
- That said, if you’re looking for things to cut, sugar is a top candidate (and red meat is in clear second place albeit some way below)
When it comes to exercise, get your 10,000 daily steps in (actually, science says 8,000 steps is fine), and consider adding HIIT per our above article, when you feel like adding that in. As for that about the steps:
When it comes to sleep, if you’re taking care of the above things, and set a regular early wake-up time that you do not deviate from, then this will probably take care of itself, if you don’t have a sleep-inconvenient lifestyle (e.g. shift work, just had a baby, etc) or a sleep disorder.
For further pointers, see: 10 Tips for Better Sleep: Starting In The Morning
Take care!
Don’t Forget…
Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!
Learn to Age Gracefully
Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:
