Anise vs Diabetes & Menopause

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:

• Anise, specifically the seed of the plant, also called aniseed, is enjoyed for its licorice taste—as well as its medicinal properties.

  • Its main medicinal claims are:

    • Reduces menopause symptoms

      • Studies found a huge reduction in frequency and severity of hot flashes, compared to placebo

      • It may also help reduce bone mineral density loss, but we need human studies to say for sure

    • Reduces blood sugar levels

      • It not only reduces fasting blood glucose levels, but also has a collection of other anti-diabetic effects

        • See main feature for more details!

    • Reduces inflammation

      • It is a potent source of antioxidants, which thus also have an anti-inflammatory effect

        • It may also help relieve pain and the inflammation that causes it, when used as a topical ointment

• Handwash-only drinkware (especially flasks/bottles and the like that can’t be dried by hand) tend to come with an extra problem: drying it without it taking forever and being a home for new and more interesting germs along the way.

  • Today’s sponsor, Kuppy, have a novel solution that takes a fraction of the time and is much more hygienic.

Read on to learn about these things and more…

👀 WATCH AND LEARN

Understanding Fascia – Flexibility, Power & Pain (12:17)

Do you wake up in the morning feeling stiff and tight? Maybe you can feel specific areas of tightness and inflexibility? It could be caused by the connective tissue, fascia; and if so, this video is for you:

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

Fascia menu:

• 1:44 | What is fascia?

• 5:49 | Myofascial training

• 7:25 | Why and how to train fascia

• 9:42 | Foods for healthy fascia

Symptoms of damaged/unhealthy fascia:

• Pain in a specific area—sharp, dull, or achy

• Limited range of motion in a muscle or joint

• Swelling, redness, or heat caused by inflammation in the inured area

• Visible lumps or knots; palpable areas of tightness

• Numbness or tingling caused by fascial compression on nerves

If you suspect a fascial injury, we recommend to see a physiotherapist!

💊 MAIN FEATURE

What A Daily Gram Of Anise Can Do

Anise, specifically the seed of the plant, also called aniseed, is enjoyed for its licorice taste—as well as its medicinal properties.

Let’s see how well the science lives up to the folk medicine…

What medicinal properties does it claim?

The main contenders are:

• Reduces menopause symptoms

• Reduces blood sugar levels

• Reduces inflammation

Does it reduce menopause symptoms?

At least some of them! Including hot flashes and bone density loss. This seems to be due to the estrogenic-like activity of anethole, the active compound in anise that gives it these effects:

Estrogenic activity of isolated compounds and essential oils of Pimpinella species

1g of anise/day yielded a huge reduction in frequency and severity of hot flashes, compared to placebo*:

*you may be wondering what the placebo is for 1g of a substance that has a very distinctive taste. The researchers used capsules, with 3x330g as the dose, either anise seed or potato starch.

See for yourself: The Study on the Effects of Pimpinella anisum on Relief and Recurrence of Menopausal Hot Flashes

As for bone mineral density, we couldn’t find a good study for anise, but we did find this one for fennel, which is a plant of the same family and also with the primary active compound anethole:

The Prophylactic Effect of Fennel Essential Oil on Experimental Osteoporosis

That was a rat study, though, so we’d like to see studies done with humans.

Summary on this one: it clearly helps against hot flashes (per the very convincing human study we listed above); it probably helps against bone mineral density loss.

Does it reduce blood sugar levels?

This one got a flurry of attention all so recently, on account of this research review:

Review on Anti-diabetic Research on Two Important Spices: Trachyspermum ammi and Pimpinella anisum

If you read this (and we do recommend reading it! It has a lot more information than we can squeeze in here!) one of the most interesting things about the in vivo anti-diabetic activity of anise was that while it did lower the fasting blood glucose levels, that wasn’t the only effect:

That’s just one of the studies cited in that review (the comments lightly edited here for brevity), but it stands out, and you can read that study in its entirety (it’s well worth reading).

Rajeshwari et al, bless them, added a “tl;dr” at the top of their already concise abstract; their “tl;dr” reads:

Full text: Comparison of aniseeds and coriander seeds for antidiabetic, hypolipidemic and antioxidant activities

Shortest answer: yes, yes it does

Does it fight inflammation?

This one’s quick and simple enough: yes it does; it’s full of antioxidants which thus also have an anti-inflammatory effect:

Review of Pharmacological Properties and Chemical Constituents of Pimpinella anisum

…which can also be used an essential oil, applied topically, to fight both pain and the inflammation that causes it—at least in rats and mice:

Summary of this section:

• Aniseeds are a potent source of antioxidants, which fight inflammation.

• Anise essential oil is probably also useful as a topical anti-inflammatory and analgesic agent, but we’d like to see human tests to know for sure.

Is it safe?

For most people, enjoyed in moderation (e.g., within the dosage parameters described in the above studies), anise is safe. However:

• If you’re allergic to it, it won’t be safe

• Its estrogen-mimicking effects could cause problems if you have (or have a higher risk factor for) breast cancer, ovarian cancer, or endometriosis.

• For most men, the main concern is that it may lower sperm count.

Where to get it?

As ever, we don’t sell it (or anything else), but for your convenience, you can buy the seeds in bulk on Amazon, or in case you prefer it, here’s an example of it available as an essential oil.

Enjoy!

❤️ OUR SPONSORS MAKE THIS PUBLICATION POSSIBLE

The quicker, more hygienic way to dry your drinkware

Do you know the smell of the inside of an insulated flask? You shouldn’t; it’s not supposed to have a smell; the smell comes from bacteria. But you probably do know the smell, don’t you? Join the club.

There is a better way:

The Kuppy drying rack has air slots to let air flow naturally, which will dry your drinkware 5x faster, and prevent bacteria and their odors from taking root.

And unlike most regular drying racks, it can be washed quickly and easily by hand or in the dishwasher—so it’s not putting new and more interesting germs straight back onto your clean drinkware.

Please do visit our sponsors—they help keep 10almonds free

🌍 AROUND THE WEB

What’s happening in the health world…

• Fatty liver disease susceptibility: study identifies interaction between estrogen receptor and genetic variant in women

• A potential blood test for Parkinson’s disease

• Virtual reality vs opioids: clinical trial of non-pharmacological pain management during burn wound care

• Could a drug offer the benefits of exercise?

• Screen-printed, flexible sensors allow earbuds to record brain activity and exercise levels

• The silence around vulval cancer means people are missing the signs that they have it

• Do liposomes make food supplements more effective? An expert explains common myths about these products

More to come tomorrow!

📖 ONE-MINUTE BOOK REVIEW

Live Life in Crescendo: Your Most Important Work Is Always Ahead of You – by Stephen Covey and Cynthia Covey-Haller

Stephen Covey is of course best known for his "7 Habits of Highly Effective People", while the dozen books he wrote afterwards, not including this one, did not get the same acclaim.

Not including this one, because this one was published posthumously and, notwithstanding the order of the names on the cover, in all likelihood his daughter wrote most of.

And yet! The very spirit of this book is in defiance of 7 Habits being his "early career" magnum opus. We say "early career", because he was 57 already when that was published, but it was one of his earlier books.

In this work the authors lay out the case for how "your most important work is always ahead of you", and that it is perfectly possible to "live life in crescendo", and keep on giving whatever it is that we want to give to the world.

We also learn, mostly through storytelling, of how people are infinitely more important than things, and that it is there that we should put our investments. And that while adversity may not make us stronger, it just means we may need to change our approach, to continue to be productive in whatever way is meaningful to us.

Bottom line: if ever you wonder how your future could live up to your past (in a good way), this is the book to get you thinking.

Click here to check out Live Life in Crescendo, and figure out what your next great work will be!

Wishing you the most well-informed start to the week,

The 10almonds Team