The Purple Parsnip's Bioactive Brain Benefits (& more)

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:

• Angelica gigas, also called the purple parsnip, amongst other names, is a flowering plant native to Korea

  • It has potent neuroprotective effects against a critical pathogenic factor of Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Huntington’s, and Multiple Sclerosis.

  • As a bonus, it also antioxidant, immune-boosting, and anti-cancer properties, as well as the heart-healthy benefits that made the news recently.

• There’s more to yoga than getting in a few stretches (wonderful as those are).

  • Today’s sponsor, Breathe and Flow, will teach you for free about such diverse areas as skill training, optimal recovery, structural integration, complementary practices and more

Read on to learn about these things and more…

👀 WATCH AND LEARN

How to do the splits quickly, by science (9:24)

Does anyone else have this on their 2024 list?

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

Stretchy menu:

• 0:45 | About the method

• 1:53 | The real factor that limits flexibility

• 3:10 | The mechanism that deactivates that

• 4:03 | The method itself explained

• 4:44 | The "magic trick"

• 6:58 | Evidence-based recommendations on how to effectively apply this

Prefer text? Click here to find the nine research papers he cites under the video 🤓

Want to watch it, but not right now? Bookmark it for later 🔖

💊 MAIN FEATURE

This Root Might Be A Guardian Angel

Sometimes we go searching for supplements to research; sometimes supplements present themselves for examination! In this case, our attention was grabbed by a headline:

Angelica gigas extract emerges as a potential treatment for vascular disease

Angelica who?

Angelica gigas, also called the purple parsnip (amongst other names), is a flowering plant native to Korea. It has assorted medicinal properties, and in this case, it was its heart-healthy benefits that were making news:

Source: Angelica gigas extract inhibits acetylation of eNOS via IRE1α sulfonation/RIDD-SIRT1-mediated posttranslational modification in vascular dysfunction

But it has a lot more to offer…

The root has various bioactive metabolites, but the compounds that most studies are most interested in are decursin and decursinol, for their neuroprotective and cognitive enhancement effects:

That middle paragraph there? That’s one of the main pathogenic processes of Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Huntington’s, and Multiple Sclerosis.

Angelica gigas attenuates (reduces the force of) that process:

Read more: Neuroprotective and Cognitive Enhancement Potentials of Angelica gigas Nakai Root: A Review

Beyond neuroprotection & cognitive enhancement

…and also beyond its protection against vascular disease, which is what got our attention…

Angelica gigas also has antioxidant properties, anti-cancer properties, and general immune-boosting properties.

We’ve only so much room, so: those links above will take you to example studies for those things, but there are plenty more where they came from, so we’re quite confident in this one.

Of course, what has antioxidant properties is usually anti-inflammatory, anti-cancer, and anti-aging, because these things are reliant on many of the same processes as each other, with a lot of overlap.

Where can we get it?

We don’t sell it, but here’s an example product on Amazon, for your convenience 😎

Enjoy!

❤️ OUR SPONSORS MAKE THIS PUBLICATION POSSIBLE

Yoga Beyond Asana

There’s more to yoga than getting in a few stretches. Those are great, of course, but if you would like to deepen your practice, this free newsletter will take you there.

Here you can learn, for free, about such diverse areas as skill training, optimal recovery, structural integration, complementary practices and more:

🌏 AROUND THE WEB

What’s happening in the health world…

• Experimental therapy eases Alzheimer's symptoms

• Mental health problems not reduced after obesity surgery

• Six ways to look after your eyes in 2024

• Breast cancer cells' self-sacrificial behavior uncovered as potential cause of relapse

• Poor vision and falls: a deadly combo for seniors

• Bold changes are in store for Medi-Cal in 2024, but will patients benefit?

• Alzheimer's discovery reveals dire effect of toxic tau protein on brain cells

More to come tomorrow!

📖 ONE-MINUTE BOOK REVIEW

Bored of Lunch: The Healthy Slow Cooker Book With 80+ Exciting Recipes – by Nathan Anthony

Cooking with a slow cooker is famously easy, but often we settle down on a few recipes and then don't vary. This book brings a healthy dose of inspiration and variety.

The recipes themselves range from comfort food to fancy entertaining, pasta dishes to risottos, and even what the author categorizes as "fakeaways" (a play on the British English "takeaway", cf. AmE "takeout"), so indulgent nights in have never been healthier!

For each recipe, you'll see a nice simple clear layout of all you'd expect (ingredients, method, etc) plus calorie count, so that you can have a rough idea of how much food each meal is.

In terms of dietary restrictions you may have, there's quite a variety here so it'll be easy to find things for all needs, and in addition to that, optional substitutions are mostly quite straightforward too.

Bottom line: if you have a slow cooker but have been cooking only the same three things in it for the past ten years, this is the book to liven things up, while staying healthy!

Click here to check out Bored of Lunch: The Healthy Slow Cooker Book, and take the effort out of healthy cooking!

Wishing you the very best start to the year,

The 10almonds Team