Sugar, Hazelnuts, Books & Brains
Did you know that hazelnut milk is high in protein, Vitamin B and Vitamin E? Sadly, though, it doesn’t quite hit the mark with calcium.
It’s Q&A Day!
Each Thursday, we respond to subscriber questions and requests! If it’s something small, we’ll answer it directly; if it’s something bigger, we’ll do a main feature in a follow-up day instead!
So, no question/request to big or small; they’ll just get sorted accordingly 😎
Remember, you can always hit reply to any of our emails, or use the handy feedback widget at the bottom. We always look forward to hearing from you!
Q: Interesting info, however, I drink hazelnut milk LOL so would have liked a review of that. But now I want to give hemp and pea milks a try. Thanks 😊
Aww! Here then just for you, is a quick rundown…
- Pros: high in protein¹, vitamin B, and vitamin E
- Cons: high in fat², low in calcium
¹Compared head-to-head with almond milk for example, it has double the protein (but also double the calories)
²However, is also has been found to lower LDL (bad) cholesterol (and incidentally, also reduce inflammation), and in a later systematic review, it was found to not correlate to weight gain, despite its high calorie-content.
If you don’t already, and would like to try making your own…
Click here for step-by-step instructions to make your own hazelnut milk! (very simple)
Q: Wondering if you can evaluate CLA and using it to assist with weight loss. Thanks
Will do! (Watch this space)
Q: What’s the process behind the books you recommend? You seem to have a limitless stream of recommendations
We do our best!
The books we recommend are books that…
- are on Amazon—it makes things tidy, consistent, and accessible. And if you end up buying one of the books, we get a small affiliate commission*.
- we have read—we would say “obviously”, but you might be surprised how many people write about books without having read them.
- pertain in at least large part to health and/or productivity.
- are written by humans—bookish people (and especially Kindle Unlimited users) may have noticed lately that there are a lot of low quality AI-written books flooding the market, sometimes with paid 5-star reviews to bolster them. It’s frustrating, but we can tell the difference and screen those out.
- are of a certain level of quality. They don’t have to be “top 5 desert-island books”, because well, there’s one every day and the days keep coming. But they do have to genuinely deliver the value that we describe, and merit a sincere recommendation.
- are varied—we try to not give a run of “samey” books one after another. We will sometimes review a book that covers a topic another previously-reviewed book did, but it must have something about it that makes it different. It may be a different angle or a different writing style, but it needs something to set it apart.
*this is from Amazon and isn’t product-specific, so this is not affecting our choice of what books to review at all—just that they will be books that are available on Amazon.
Q: Great video on dopamine. Thumbs up on the book recommendation. Would you please consider doing a piece or two on inflammation? I live with Lupus and it is a constant struggle. Thanks for the awesome work you do. Have an excellent day.
Great suggestion! We will do that, and thank you for the kind words!
Q: Why is your newsletter called 10almonds? Maybe I missed it in the intro email, but my curiosity wants to know the significance. Thanks!”
It’s a reference to a viral Facebook hoax! There was a post going around that claimed:
❝HEADACHE REMEDY. Eat 10–12 almonds, the equivalent of two aspirins, next time you have a headache❞ ← not true!
It made us think about how much health-related disinformation there was online… So, calling ourselves 10almonds was a bit of a tongue-in-cheek reference to that story… but also a reminder to ourselves:
We must always publish information with good scientific evidence behind it!
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Stop Cancer 20 Years Ago
Dr. Jenn Simmons shares vital tips on preventing cancer and inflammation, advocating for lifestyle changes and proactive health management at any age.
Get Abreast And Keep Abreast
This is Dr. Jenn Simmons. Her specialization is integrative oncology, as she—then a breast cancer surgeon—got breast cancer, decided the system wasn’t nearly as good from the patients’ side of things as from the doctors’ side, and took to educate herself, and now others, on how things can be better.
What does she want us to know?
Start now
If you have breast cancer, the best time to start adjusting your lifestyle might be 20 years ago, but the second-best time is now. We realize our readers with breast cancer (or a history thereof) probably have indeed started already—all strength to you.
What this means for those of us without breast cancer (or a history therof) is: start now
Even if you don’t have a genetic risk factor, even if there’s no history of it in your family, there’s just no reason not to start now.
Start what, you ask? Taking away its roots. And how?
Inflammation as the root of cancer
To oversimplify: cancer occurs because an accidentally immortal cell replicates and replicates and replicates and takes any nearby resources to keep on going. While science doesn’t know all the details of how this happens, it is a factor of genetic mutation (itself a normal process, without which evolution would be impossible), something which in turn is accelerated by damage to the DNA. The damage to the DNA? That occurs (often as not) as a result of cellular oxidation. Cellular oxidation is far from the only genotoxic thing out there, and a lot of non-food “this thing causes cancer” warnings are usually about other kinds of genotoxicity. But cellular oxidation is a big one, and it’s one that we can fight vigorously with our lifestyle.
Because cellular oxidation and inflammation go hand-in-hand, reducing one tends to reduce the other. That’s why so often you’ll see in our Research Review Monday features, a line that goes something like:
“and now for those things that usually come together: antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, anticancer, and anti-aging”
So, fight inflammation now, and have a reduced risk of a lot of other woes later.
See: How to Prevent (or Reduce) Inflammation
Don’t settle for “normal”
People are told, correctly but not always helpfully, such things as:
- It’s normal to have less energy at your age
- It’s normal to have a weaker immune system at your age
- It’s normal to be at a higher risk of diabetes, heart disease, etc
…and many more. And these things are true! But that doesn’t mean we have to settle for them.
We can be all the way over on the healthy end of the distribution curve. We can do that!
(so can everyone else, given sufficient opportunity and resources, because health is not a zero-sum game)
If we’re going to get a cancer diagnosis, then our 60s are the decade where we’re most likely to get it. Earlier than that and the risk is extant but lower; later than that and technically the risk increases, but we probably got it already in our 60s.
So, if we be younger than 60, then now’s a good time to prepare to hit the ground running when we get there. And if we missed that chance, then again, the second-best time is now:
See: Focusing On Health In Our Sixties
Fast to live
Of course, anything can happen to anyone at any age (alas), but this is about the benefits of living a fasting lifestyle—that is to say, not just fasting for a 4-week health kick or something, but making it one’s “new normal” and just continuing it for life.
This doesn’t mean “never eat”, of course, but it does mean “practice intermittent fasting, if you can”—something that Dr. Simmons strongly advocates.
See: Intermittent Fasting: We Sort The Science From The Hype
While this calls back to the previous “fight inflammation”, it deserves its own mention here as a very specific way of fighting it.
It’s never too late
All of the advices that go before a cancer diagnosis, continue to stand afterwards too. There is no point of “well, I already have cancer, so what’s the harm in…?”
The harm in it after a diagnosis will be the same as the harm before. When it comes to lifestyle, preventing a cancer and preventing it from spreading are very much the same thing, which is also the same as shrinking it. Basically, if it’s anticancer, it’s anticancer, no matter whether it’s before, during, or after.
Dr. Simmons has seen too many patients get a diagnosis, and place their lives squarely in the hands of doctors, when doctors can only do so much.
Instead, Dr. Simmons recommends taking charge of your health as best you are able, today and onwards, no matter what. And that means two things:
- Knowing stuff
- Doing stuff
So it becomes our responsibility (and our lifeline) to educate ourselves, and take action accordingly.
Want to know more?
We recently reviewed her book, and heartily recommend it:
The Smart Woman’s Guide to Breast Cancer – by Dr. Jenn Simmons
Enjoy!