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 😎

❝Natural remedies for travel sickness / motion sickness that actually work?❞

First let’s take a brief moment to mention unnatural remedies!

Travel sickness medications are not only not all the same (i.e., they are different drugs from each other), but they’re not even all the same class of drugs, for example cinnarizine and promethazine hydrochloride are both antihistamines but work (as antihistamines) in mostly different ways, and scopolamine/ hyoscine hydrobromide (that’s one drug by two different names) is a muscarinic inhibitor (a muscarinic acetylcholine receptor antagonist) that blocks the signals in a third, entirely different way. There are other options too, but those are the most common ones.

We’re not going to recommend one over the others, but we are going to say: if one doesn’t work, you might want to try a different one to see if that works better for you. Our individual physiologies will tend to differ sufficiently that what works well for one person might not be what’s best for another.

Natural remedies

A lot of research in this regard has been done against nausea generally, and not necessarily against motion sickness specifically.

The reason for this is simple: it’s a lot easier to reliably induce other kinds of nausea in a laboratory setting, than it is to reliably induce motion sickness! Therefore, other kinds of nausea are easier to test remedies against.

That said, as a general rule of thumb things that are good against “nausea in general” are also good against nausea from motion sickness.

For example, ginger has been well-studied against nausea (mostly in pregnancy, chemotherapy, or post-operative nausea). If we try to find some of the science most relevant to your query, we find for example:

Clinical Evaluation of the Use of Ginger Extract in the Preventive Management of Motion Sickness

…pretty much concluded “sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t; who knows?”

Ginger for treating nausea and vomiting: an overview of systematic reviews and meta-analyses

…concluded (again, we paraphrase) “this consistently looks good, but the standard of evidence is low; we need better methodology to make declarative statements about it”

Meanwhile, here’s a much more specific, but also small (n=13) study that investigated ginger against motion sickness, and found:

❝Pretreatment with ginger (1,000 and 2,000 mg) reduced the nausea, tachygastria, and plasma vasopressin.

Ginger also prolonged the latency before nausea onset and shortened the recovery time after vection cessation.

Ginger effectively reduces nausea, tachygastric activity, and vasopressin release induced by circular vection.

In this manner, ginger may act as a novel agent in the prevention and treatment of motion sickness.❞

In other words: based on this tiny study at least, it works, but it’s not perfect. It delays the start of nausea, it makes the nausea less severe if it occurs, and it hastens recovery after nausea. It works by calming the stomach, and also by lowering levels of a hormone that is known to promote nausea.

Read in full: Effects of ginger on motion sickness and gastric slow-wave dysrhythmias induced by circular vection

Another natural approach is the use of acupressure, for which the most widely-used and well-researched (although again, most of the research has been for kinds of nausea other than motion sickness) is:

The Effect of Neiguan Point (P6) Acupressure With Wristband on Postoperative Nausea, Vomiting, and Comfort Level: A Randomized Controlled Study

This one’s particularly popular because it can be done with (as the study title there suggests) a wristband, which is more consistent than doing it yourself, and if you are the driver, does not require you to take your hands off the wheel.

There are other acupressure methods, but mostly less well-studied, for example: 7 Pressure Points for Nausea ← pop-science article with negligible hard science, but it has diagrams and instructions, which are helpful, even if you only go for the P6 point on the wrist, the one for which there is plenty of science!

Aside from those things, some general advice you probably already know but just in case:

• Have a light bite to eat before travelling (you don’t want to have just eaten a large meal necessarily, but you don’t want an empty stomach either which—counterintuitively—can make nausea worse)
• Stay hydrated (not overhydrated, but enough that you are definitely not dehydrated, which—counterintuitively again—can make nausea worse)
• Eyes front (best if you are driving, but even if you are a passenger, or in some vehicle that you can’t see out the front of, looking forwards is better than looking to the side)
• Ventilate (if possible; recirculated air is not as good as fresh air if available)
• Take breaks (if possible; this may be less of an option if in a plane or boat, for example)

Take care!

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

❝Would love to see more on eating vegan. I am allergic to soy in any form which seems to be in everything❞

There is a lot of it about, isn’t there? Happily, these days, a lot of meat and dairy alternatives are also made from other sources, for example pea protein is getting used a lot more nowadays in meat substitutes, and there are many kinds of alternatives to dairy (e.g. nut milks, oat milk, hemp milk, and—which is a branding nightmare but very healthy—pea milk).

You might like these previous main features of ours:

• Do We Need Animal Products To Be Healthy?
• The Whys and Hows of Cutting Down Meat Consumption
• Plant-Based Milks—What’s Best?

Also, if doing a whole foods plant-based diet, lentils (especially brown lentils) can be used as a great substitute for minced beef/lamb in recipes that call for such.

Boil the lentils (a liter of water to a cup of lentils is great; use a rice cooker if you have one!) along with the seasonings you will use (herbs appropriate to your dish, and then: black pepper is always good; you shouldn’t need to add salt; a teaspoon of low-sodium yeast extract is great though, or to really get the best nutritional benefits, nooch).

When it is done, you shouldn’t have excess water now, so just use as is, or if you want a slightly fatty kick, fry briefly in a little extra virgin olive oil, before using it however you were planning to use it.

Enjoy!

❝What foods should I eat for hyperthyroidism? My doctor tells me what foods to avoid, but not what to eat❞

Great question! We’ll have to do a main feature on hyperthyroidism one of these days, as so far we’ve only done features on hypothyroidism:

• Foods For Managing Hypothyroidism
• A Fresh Take On Hypothyroidism

As for hyperthyroidism…

Depending on your medications, your doctor might recommend a low iodine diet. If so, then you might want to check out:

American Thyroid Association | Low Iodine Diet Plan

…for recommendations.

But in a way, that’s still a manner of “what to avoid” (iodine) and then the foods to eat to avoid that.

You may be wondering: is there any food that actively helps against hyperthyroidism, as opposed to merely does not cause problems?

And the answer is: yes!

Cruciferous vegetables (e.g. cabbage, sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower, etc) contain goitrin, which in immoderate quantities can cause problems for people with hypothyroidism because it can reduce thyroid hormone synthesis. If you have hyperthyroidism, however, this can work in your favor.

Read more: The role of micronutrients in thyroid dysfunction

The above paper focuses on children, but it was the paper we found that explains it most clearly while showing good science. However, the same holds true for adults:

Read more: Concentrations of thiocyanate and goitrin in human plasma, their precursor concentrations in brassica vegetables, and associated potential risk for hypothyroidism

Notwithstanding that the title comes from the angle of examining hypothyroidism, the mechanism of action makes clear its beneficence in the case of hyperthyroidism.

Selenium is also a great nutrient in the case of autoimmune hyperthyroidism, because it is needed to metabolize thyroid hormone (if you don’t metabolize it, it’ll just build up):

Selenium and Thyroid Disease: From Pathophysiology to Treatment

The absolute top best dietary source of selenium is Brazil nuts, to the point that people without hyperthyroidism have to take care to not eat more than a few per day (because too much selenium could then cause problems):

NIH | Selenium Fact Sheet for Health Professionals

(this contains information on the recommended amount, the upper limit amount, how much is in Brazil nuts and other foods, and what happens if you get too much or too little)

Note: after Brazil nuts (which are about 5 times more rich in selenium than the next highest source), the other “good” sources of selenium—mostly various kinds of fish—are also “good” source of iodine, so you might want to skip those.

Want more ideas?

You might like this from LivHealth:

Hyperthyroidism Diet: 9 Foods To Ease Symptoms

Enjoy!