What Macronutrient Balance Is Right For You?
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It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!
Have a question or a request? We love to hear from you!
In cases where we’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 too—there’s always more to say!
As ever: if the question/request can be answered briefly, we’ll do it here in our Q&A Thursday edition. If not, we’ll make a main feature of it shortly afterwards!
So, no question/request too big or small 😎
❝I want to learn more about macros. Can you cover that topic?❞
That’s a little broader than we usually go for, given the amount of space we have, but let’s give it a go!
Macronutrients, or “macros”, are the nutrients that we typically measure in grams rather than milligrams or micrograms, and are:
- Carbohydrates
- …and what kinds, of which usually the focus is on how much is sugars as opposed to more complex carbs that take longer to break down. See also: Should You Go Light Or Heavy On Carbs?
- …and of the sugars, the interested may further categorize them into sucrose, fructose, etc. See also: Which Sugars Are Healthier, And Which Are Just The Same?
- Proteins
- …of which, the amino acid make-up is generally considered a matter of micronutrients. See also: Protein: How Much Do We Need, Really?
- Fats
- …and what kinds, i.e. monounsaturated vs polyunsaturated vs saturated. See also: Saturated Fat: What’s The Truth?
- …and then the interested may further categorize them for their fatty acids / triglycerides profile, etc. See also: What Omega-3 Fatty Acids Really Do For Us
- Fiber
- …which often gets ignored by people counting macros, as “stuff that doesn’t do anything”, despite it in fact being very important for health. See also: Why You’re Probably Not Getting Enough Fiber (And How To Fix It)
- Water
- …which again tends to get disregarded but is very arguably a critical macronutrient. See also: Busting The Myth of “Eight Glasses Of Water A Day”
In terms of how much we need of each, you can read more in the above-linked articles, but:
- General scientific consensus is we need plenty of fiber (30 or 40g per day is good) and water (highly dependent on climate and activity), and there’s a clear minimum requisite for protein (usually put at around 1g of protein per day per 1kg of body weight).
- There is vigorous debate in the general health community about what the best ratio of carbs to fat is.
The reality is that humans are quite an adaptable species, and while we absolutely do need at least some of both (carbohydrates and fats), we can play around with the ratios quite a bit, provided we don’t get too extreme about it.
While some influence is social and often centered around weight loss (see for example keto which seeks to minimize carbs, and volumetrics, which seeks maximise volume-to-calorie ratio, which de facto tends to minimize fats), some of what drives us to lean one way or the other will be genetics, too—dependent on what our ancestors ate more or less of.
Writer’s example: my ancestors could not grow much grain (or crops in general) where they were, so they got more energy from such foods as whale and seal fat (with protein coming more from reindeer). Now, biology is not destiny, and I personally enjoy a vegan diet complete with a lot of lentils and beans, but my genes are probably why I am driven to get a lot of my daily calories from fat (of which, a lot of fatty nuts (don’t tell almonds, but I prefer walnuts and cashews) and healthy oils such as olive oil, avocado oil, and coconut oil).
However! About that adaptability. Provided we make changes slowly, we can usually adjust our diet to whatever we want it to be, including whether we get our energy more from carbs or fats. The reason we need to make changes slowly is because our gut needs time to adjust. For example, if your vegan writer here were to eat her ancestrally-favored foods now, I’d be very ill, because my gut microbiome has no idea what to do with animal products anymore, no matter what genes I have. In contrast, if an enthusiastic enjoyer of a meat-heavy diet were to switch to my fiber-rich diet overnight, they’d be very ill.
So: follow your natural inclinations, make any desired changes slowly, and if in doubt, it’s hard to go wrong with enjoying carbs and fats in moderation.
Learn more: Intuitive Eating Might Not Be What You Think
Take care!
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Huntington’s Disease Successfully Treated For First Time!
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…and other items from this week’s health news:
Good news for those affected by Huntington’s Disease
Huntington’s disease is hereditary, and so determinably so that it’s often used in high school biology as an easy example of using a punnet square to determine inheritance; if one parent has the gene, you have a 50% chance of having it too. Symptoms usually show up in early adulthood, and once symptoms do appear, life expectancy is 15–20 years.
Because of increasing problems with muscle coordination (including autonomic functions like respiration and circulation) and cognitive decline, the top three Huntington’s-related causes of death currently are:
- Pneumonia (more likely to accidentally inhale food/drink and can’t clear the lungs adequately)
- Heart disease (heart not pumping correctly, and vascular tone is not great either)
- Suicide (brain not doing well, and also quality of life is increasingly poor)
This new treatment developed by Dr. Sarah Tabrizi et al. is a single-dose gene therapy; a modified virus inserts DNA into neurons, which then produce microRNA to silence the faulty Huntington gene, reducing toxic protein levels.
In the first trials (n=29), three-year data is showing major slowing of symptoms and reduced brain cell loss, confirmed by lower neurofilament levels in spinal fluid, and a 75% reduction in disease progression after gene therapy, meaning that while it’s not a complete cure, degeneration that would normally take a certain amount of time will now take 4x as long.
In practical terms, if we remember that the life expectancy without treatment is 15–20 years, multiplying that by 4 makes a huge difference, given that symptoms usually show up in one’s 20s or 30s, as it moves the prognosis of Huntington’s-related death from age 35–50 or so, to to age 80–100 or so. In other words, it restores normal lifespan, and greatly improves quality of life along the way.
Indeed, some patients in the study have now returned to work, and/or left wheelchairs behind them, such has been their recovery.
Read in full: Huntington’s disease successfully treated for first time
Related: Genetic Testing: Health Benefits & Methods
Good news for those affected by Multiple Sclerosis
This is also huge, and surprisingly easy, and a lot more accessible than the gene therapy in the previous story.
While scientists are still not really sure what actually causes MS or how it happens, they do know it has to do with neuronal demyelination, or “the protective sheathes around your neurons get degraded”—the biological equivalent of electrical wires getting stripped of the plastic coating, and thus short-circuiting or getting broken.
This new study found that pairing the diabetes drug metformin with the antihistamine clemastine shows potential to repair myelin damage in MS.
How it works: clemastine reactivates myelin repair, while metformin appears to enhance that effect. Together, they may protect against progressive nerve damage, though (alas) dead nerves cannot be regenerated this way.
Because nerves are famously tricky for the body to repair even with help, benefits may take longer than six months to appear. Side effects in the trial included fatigue from clemastine and diarrhea from metformin, so there are drawbacks too.
Read in full: “Exciting” clinical results provide hope for a new class of MS therapy
Related: Five Advance Warnings of Multiple Sclerosis
Good news for those affected by psoriasis
Ok, so this one’s arguably perhaps not as life-changing as the other two, but we’re continuing the good news streak here, and let’s face it, psoriasis isn’t fun and doesn’t tend to enrich life, so if its symptoms can be reduced by 75%, so much the better!
We’ll keep this one short: the Mediterranean diet is great for many things, and this is one more. In this study, 47.4% on the Mediterranean diet achieved 75% symptom reduction, versus 0% in the control group, with benefits independent of weight loss. So this one’s quite clear indeed.
How it works: the improvements are attributed to the diet’s anti-inflammatory and cardiometabolic properties, which we’ve written about before at 10almonds.
So, this one’s not surprising, but it certainly is good news:
Read in full: Mediterranean diet leads to 75% symptom reduction in patients with mild to moderate psoriasis
Related: Four Ways To Upgrade The Mediterranean
Take care!
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Technology: Good Or Bad For Brain Health In Later Life?
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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:
- Passive screentime is not the same as active engagement. Watching TV shows or scrolling social media in search of dopamine that one won’t find there, is not the same as, say, reading a health science article from your favorite health science newsletter 😉
- See also: Short- and Long-Term Effects of Passive and Active Screen Time on Young Children’s Phonological Memory ← yes, it’s about children, but honestly, scouring PubMed for studies into screentime and older adults mostly just brings up studies about kids
- Increased use of omnipresent technology (especially apps with notifications or that one can constantly refresh to get more content) means increased distractibility
- Decreased use of one’s own brain (as we can automate many things with technology) means losing those cognitive abilities to a greater or lesser degree.
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.
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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- Passive screentime is not the same as active engagement. Watching TV shows or scrolling social media in search of dopamine that one won’t find there, is not the same as, say, reading a health science article from your favorite health science newsletter 😉
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Eat This Daily For No Wrinkles (& How It Works)
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Dr. Andrea Suarez explains:
Go nuts for…
Almonds! They’re rich in vitamin E (alpha-tocopherol), beta-sitosterol, squalane, protein, and fiber:
- Vitamin E acts as an antioxidant, protecting skin lipids.
- Lipids in almonds support the skin barrier and hydration.
- Protein is necessary for collagen synthesis.
- Fiber promotes gut health, indirectly benefiting skin.
- Polyphenolic compounds in almond skins (not the shells, the skins, the fibrous brown part that slides off if you blanch them) provide additional skin protection.
The science (yes, there have been almond intervention studies!):
- 2019 Study:
- Participants: 28 post-menopausal women with fair skin (Fitzpatrick phototype 1-2).
- Design: 20% of daily calories from almonds vs. a calorie-matched snack.
- Results: 9% decrease in facial wrinkles in the almond group, no change in oil production or barrier function.
- 2021 Study:
- Extended Duration: 24 weeks with a similar design as the 2019 study.
- Findings: further wrinkle reduction and improvement in skin pigmentation.
- Mechanism: vitamin E may reduce hyperpigmentation and support antioxidant defense.
- UV Protection Study (2021):
- Participants: healthy Asian women (18–45 years, Fitzpatrick phototype 2-4).
- Method: daily almond snack vs pretzel snack for 12 weeks.
- Outcome: increased skin resistance to UV damage in the almond group.
Obviously, a limitation is there is not really an option to make a RCT with a blinded control; “…and group B will only think they are eating almonds” doesn’t really work. Hence, interventional RCTs with a non-blinded control (the calorie-matched snack).
Almonds may not be the cure to all things, but they certainly are potent nuts. Best enjoyed, of course, as part of a healthy overall diet (Mediterranean diet is great), and it’s certainly advisable to take care of your skin from the outside too (sunscreen as a must; other things optional).
For more on all of this, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
Why You Should Diversify Your Nuts
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Spirulina vs Sun-Dried Tomatoes – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing spirulina to sun-dried tomatoes, we picked the sun-dried tomatoes.
Why?
Both are great! But…
In terms of macros, spirulina has a tiny bit more protein, while sun-dried tomatoes have 12x the fiber for 9x the carbs, winning this round, mostly on account of the dodectuple fiber.
In the category of vitamins, spirulina has a tiny bit more of vitamins E and K, while sun-dried tomatoes have a lot more of vitamins A, B3, B5, B6, B9, and C, winning easily.
Looking at minerals, spirulina has a tiny bit more copper and iron, while sun-dried tomatoes have a lot more calcium, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, and zinc, for another overwhelming win.
In other considerations, spirulina has no beneficial phytochemicals (because it is not a plant; it’s mostly a big colony of cyanobacteria), and unlike some seaweed, the B12 it does have is in an inactive form, while sun-dried tomatoes have abundant polyphenols, and also lycopene which is not be definition a polyphenol (it’s a carotenoid), but does a similar job and is a very potent antioxidant. In any case, this category is one more win for sun-dried tomatoes.
Lest this all seem very damning for spirulina, we’ll take a moment to reiterate that spirulina is very nutritionally dense, and it only looks bad here because it’s standing next to sun-dried tomatoes which are better in almost every way.
Nevertheless, adding up the sections does make for a very clear overall win for sun-dried tomatoes, so, enjoy!
Want to learn more?
You might like:
Enjoy!
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Mediterranean Diet… In A Pill?
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Does It Come In A Pill?
For any as yet unfamiliar with the Mediterranean diet, you may be wondering what it involves, beyond a general expectation that it’s a diet popularly enjoyed in the Mediterranean. What image comes to mind?
We’re willing to bet that tomatoes feature (great source of lycopene, by the way, and if you’re not getting lycopene, you’re missing out), but what else?
- Salads, perhaps? Vegetables, olives? Olive oil, yea or nay?
- Bread? Pasta? Prosciutto, salami? Cheese?
- Pizza but only if it’s Romana style, not Chicago?
- Pan-seared liver, with some fava beans and a nice Chianti?
In fact, the Mediterranean diet is quite clear on all these questions, so to read about these and more (including a “this yes, that no” list), see:
What Is The Mediterranean Diet, And What Is It Good For?
So, how do we get that in a pill?
A plucky band of researchers, Dr. Chiara de Lucia et al. (quite a lot of “et al.”; nine listed authors on the study), wondered to what extent the benefits of the Mediterranean diet come from the fact that the Mediterranean diet is very rich in polyphenols, and set about testing that, by putting the same polyphenols in capsule form, and running a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover clinical intervention trial.
Now, polyphenols are not the only reason the Mediterranean diet is great; there are also other considerations, such as:
- a great macronutrient balance with lots of fiber, healthy fats, moderate carbs, and protein from select sources
- the absence or at least very low presence of a lot of harmful substances such as refined seed oils, added sugars, refined carbohydrates, and the like (“but pasta” yes pasta; in moderation and wholegrain and served with extra sources of fiber and healthy fats, all of which slow down the absorption of the carbs)
…but polyphenols are admittedly very important too; we wrote about some common aspects of them here:
Tasty Polyphenols: Enjoy Bitter Foods For Your Heart & Brain
As for what Dr. de Lucia et al. put into the capsule, behold…
The ingredients:
- Apple Extract 10.0%
- Pomegranate Extract 10.0%
- Tomato Powder 2.5%
- Beet, Spray Dried 2.5%
- Olive Extract 7.5%
- Rosemary Extract 7.5%
- Green Coffee Bean Extract (CA) 7.5%
- Kale, Freeze Dried 2.5%
- Onion Extract 10.0%
- Ginger Extract 10.0%
- Grapefruit Extract 2.5%
- Carrot, Air Dried 2.5%
- Grape Skin Extract 17.5%
- Blueberry Extract 2.5%
- Currant, Freeze Dried 2.5%
- Elderberry, Freeze Dried 2.5%
And the relevant phytochemicals they contain:
- Quercetin
- Luteolin
- Catechins
- Punicalagins
- Phloretin
- Ellagic Acid
- Naringin
- Apigenin
- Isorhamnetin
- Chlorogenic Acids
- Rosmarinic Acid
- Anthocyanins
- Kaempferol
- Proanthocyanidins
- Myricetin
- Betanin
And what, you may wonder, did they find? Well, first let’s briefly summarise the setup of the study:
They took volunteers (n=30), average age 67, BMI >25, without serious health complaints, not taking other supplements, not vegetarian or vegan, not consuming >5 cups of coffee per day, and various other stipulations like that, to create a fairly homogenous study group who were expected to respond well to the intervention. In contrast, someone who takes antioxidant supplements, already eats many different color plants per day, and drinks 10 cups of coffee, probably already has a lot of antioxidant activity going on, and someone with a lower BMI will generally have lower resting levels of inflammatory markers, so it’s harder to see a change, proportionally.
About those inflammatory markers: that’s what they were testing, to see whether the intervention “worked”; essentially, did the levels of inflammatory markers go up or down (up is bad; down is good).
For more on inflammation, by the way, see:
How to Prevent (or Reduce) Inflammation
…which also explains what it actually is, and some important nuances about it.
Back to the study…
They gave half the participants the supplement for a week and the other half placebo; had a week’s gap as a “washout”, then repeated it, switching the groups, taking blood samples before and after each stage.
What they found:
The group taking the supplement had lower inflammatory markers after a week of taking it, while the group taking the placebo had relatively higher inflammatory markers after a week of taking it; this trend was preserved across both groups (i.e., when they switched roles for the second half).
The results were very significant (p=0.01 or thereabouts), and yet at the same time, quite modest (i.e. the supplement made a very reliable, very small difference), probably because of the small dose (150mg) and small intervention period (1 week).
What the researchers concluded from this
The researchers concluded that this was a success; the study had been primarily to provide proof of principle, not to rock the world. Now they want the experiment to be repeated with larger sample sizes, greater heterogeneity, larger doses, and longer intervention periods.
This is all very reasonable and good science.
What we conclude from this
That ingredients list makes for a good shopping list!
Well, not the extracts they listed, necessarily, but rather those actual fruits, vegetables, etc.
If nine top scientists (anti-aging specialists, neurobiologists, pharmacologists, and at least one professor of applied statistics) came to the conclusion that to get the absolute most bang-for-buck possible, those are the plants to get the phytochemicals from, then we’re not going to ignore that.
So, take another list above and ask yourself: how many of those 16 foods do you eat regularly, and could you work the others in?
Want to make your Mediterranean diet even better?
While the Mediterranean diet is a top-tier catch-all, it can be tweaked for specific areas of health, for example giving it an extra focus on heart health, or brain health, or being anti-inflammatory, or being especially gut healthy:
Four Ways To Upgrade The Mediterranean
Enjoy!
Don’t Forget…
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Why is Gen Z Aging So Quickly?
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There is one huge contributing factor:
The aging accelerator
Vaping affects more than just your lungs. In fact, it affects your entire body, and quitting vaping has a far greater impact on your skin health than any skincare routine.
Here’s a non-exhaustive list of ways it is harmful to the skin:
- Impaired wound healing: nicotine reduces blood flow to your skin, limiting oxygen, nutrients, and growth factors needed for repair, causing cuts and wounds to heal more slowly.
- Skin irritation and allergies: vaping can trigger contact dermatitis and allergic reactions, especially around your mouth and hands, with nickel from heating coils and chemical flavorings acting as common irritants.
- Worsening skin diseases: vaping has been associated with flare-ups of all manner of maladies, including discoid lupus, morphea, and periorificial dermatitis.
- Burn injuries: something people don’t think about much when it comes to vaping risks, but honestly, exploding batteries and overheating devices have caused a lot of burns, particularly to the hands and thighs.
- Inflammation: vaping increases inflammatory signalling in skin cells, which contribute to skin damage too.
- Oxidative stress: vaping generates free radicals that damage collagen and elastin, contributing to wrinkles, dullness, and faster skin aging overall.
- Reduced skin nourishment: nicotine-induced narrowing of blood vessels decreases the delivery of oxygen and nutrients that your skin needs for healing and maintenance.
- Weakened skin barrier: heat and chemicals from vaping can damage your skin barrier, making your skin more prone to redness, irritation, sensitivity, burning, and stinging.
One last thing to bear in mind:
Skincare can’t offset vaping: no matter what skincare products you use, this harm is being done so long as you are vaping. So, ideally, simply don’t vape.
For more on all of this, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like:
The Most Dangerous Ingredients That Aren’t In Your Vape Device (Until You Use It)
Take care!
Don’t Forget…
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