Are You Eating AGEs?

Today’s almonds have been activated by:

⏰ IN A RUSH?

Today’s 30-Second Summary

If you don’t have time to read the whole email today, here are some key takeaways:

• Eating a carrot a day confers a lot of health benefits (see today’s video for details)

• Advance Glycation End-Products (AGEs) are amongst the least healthy things you could include in your diet

  • Animal products contain them

  • Waterless cooking methods increase them

  • Antioxidants help fight them

• When it comes to getting quality rest, comfort is critical.

  • Today’s sponsor Sunday Citizen are here to help with that!

• Ozempic and other GLP-1 drugs may help reduce Alzheimer’s risk

• Medical cannabis improves quality of life in people with chronic pain and other conditions

Read on to learn about these things and more…

👀 WATCH AND LEARN

What happens when you eat a carrot each day

The video here uses the plural “carrots” in the title, but crunching the numbers, a single carrot of respectable size is sufficient to enjoy these benefits:

Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!

• Strengthens your bones

• Improves eye health

• Helps reduce allergy flare-ups

• Helps support heart health

• Reduces cancer

• May promote healthier hair

• Supports weight loss

• Boost your immune system

• How to eat carrots safely

Prefer text? Check out their text version (with links to supporting studies) here!

❓ MAIN FEATURE

The Trouble of the AGEs

Advanced Glycation End-Products (AGEs) are the result of the chemical process of glycation, which can occur in your body in response to certain foods you ate, or you can consume them directly, if you eat animal products that contained them (because we’re not special and other animals glycate too, especially mammals such as pigs, cows, and sheep).

As a double-whammy, if you cook animal products (especially without water, such as by roasting or frying), extra AGEs will form during cooking.

When proteinous and/or fatty food turns yellow/golden/brown during cooking, that’s generally glycation.

If there’s starch present, some or all of that yellow/golden/brown stuff will be a Maillard Reaction Product (MRP), such as acrylamide. That’s not exactly a health food, but it’s nowhere near being even in the same ballpark of badness.

In short, during cooking:

• Proteinous/fatty food turns yellow/golden/brown = probably an AGE

• Starchy food turns yellow/golden/brown = probably a MRP

The AGEs are far worse.

What’s so bad about AGEs?

Let’s do a quick tour of some studies:

• The role of advanced glycation end-products in retinal ageing and disease

• Advanced glycation end-products and their circulating receptors predict cardiovascular disease mortality in older women 

• Elevated serum advanced glycation end-products in obese indicate risk for the metabolic syndrome: a link between healthy and unhealthy obesity?

• Increased levels of serum advanced glycation end-products in women with polycystic ovary syndrome

• Advanced glycation end-products and their involvement in liver disease

• Effects of advanced glycation end-products on renal fibrosis and oxidative stress

• Role of advanced glycation end-products and oxidative stress in vascular complications in diabetes

• Cancer malignancy is enhanced by advanced glycation end-products

• Advanced glycation end-products in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease

We could keep going, but you probably get the picture!

What should we do about it?

There are three main ways to reduce serum AGE levels:

Reduce or eliminate consumption of animal products

Especially mammalian animal products, such as from pigs, cows, and sheep, especially their meat. Processed versions are even worse! So, steak is bad, but bacon and sausages are literally top-tier bad.

Cook wet

Dry cooking (which includes frying, and especially includes deep fat frying, which is worse than shallow frying which is worse than air frying) produces far more AGEs than cooking with methods that involve water (boiling, steaming, slow-cooking, etc).

As a bonus, adding acidic ingredients (e.g. vinegar, lemon juice, tomato juice) can halve the amount of AGEs produced.

Consume antioxidants

Our body does have some ability to deal with AGEs, but that ability has its limits, and our body can be easily overwhelmed if we consume foods that are bad for it. So hopefully you’ll tend towards a plant-based diet, but whether you do or don’t:

You can give your body a hand by consuming antioxidant foods and drinks (such as berries, tea/coffee, and chocolate), and/or taking supplements.

Want to know more about the science of this?

Check out…

Advanced Glycation End-Products in Foods and a Practical Guide to Their Reduction in the Diet

❤️ OUR SPONSORS MAKE THIS PUBLICATION POSSIBLE

Sunday Citizen: The World's Softest Home Goods

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So you can sleep extra easy, knowing your purchase put some good into the world too.

Click Here To Check Out Sunday Citizen!

🌍 AROUND THE WEB

What’s happening in the health world…

• Sleep apnea and lack of deep sleep associated with brain biomarkers of cerebrovascular disease

• Beyond salt: research highlights under-appreciated sources of high blood pressure

• Older adults may have heightened distractibility, study suggests

More to come tomorrow!

📖 ONE-MINUTE BOOK REVIEW

Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity - by Dr. Peter Attia

"We know, we know; this diet, that exercise, don't smoke or drink, get decent sleep"—a lot of books don't go beyond this level of advice!

What Dr. Attia offers is a multi-vector approach that covers the above and a lot more.

Themes of the book include:

• The above-mentioned things, of course

• Rethinking medicine for the age of chronic disease

• The pros and cons of...

  • caloric restriction

  • dietary restriction

  • intermittent fasting

• Pre-emptive interventions for...

  • specific common cause-of-death conditions

  • specific common age-related degenerative conditions

• The oft-forgotten extra pillar of longevity: mental health

The last one in the list there is covered mostly in the last chapter of the book, but it's there as a matter of importance, not as an afterthought. As Dr. Attia puts it, not only are you less likely to take care of your physical health if you are (for example) depressed, but also... "Longevity is meaningless if your life sucks!"

So, it's important to do things that promote and maintain good physical and mental health.

Bottom line: if you're interested in happy, healthy, longevity, this is a book for you.

Click here to check out Dr. Attia's "Outlive" on Amazon today!

Wishing you good health and comfort,

The 10almonds Team