- 10almonds
- Posts
- Cordyceps: Friend Or Foe?
Cordyceps: Friend Or Foe?
Plus: how to test, gain, and maintain your mobility
The 10almonds Team
July 17, 2023
Today’s almonds have been activated by:
Loading Screen Tip: become an expert in what matters
⏰ 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:
Cordyceps (in various strains) is enjoyed as a health supplement, based on a long history of use in Traditional Chinese Medicine, and nowadays it’s coming under a scientific spotlight too.
The main health claims for it are:
Against inflammation
Against aging
Against cancer
For blood sugar management
For heart health
For exercise performance
Check out today’s main feature for how the science stacks up for each of these claims!
Summer fun can mean much higher risks of germs and allergies
Today’s sponsor, Beekeeper’s Naturals, have a great extra line of defense to offer to keep you and your loved ones safe and comfortable
Read on to learn about these things and more…
👀 WATCH AND LEARN
How to stay calm in every situation | Attia & Huberman
💊 MAIN FEATURE
Cordyceps: friend or foe?
Cordyceps is a famously frightening fungus. It’s the one responsible for “zombie ants” and other zombie creatures, and it’s the basis for the existential threat to humanity in the TV show The Last of Us.
It’s a parasitic fungus that controls the central and peripheral nervous systems of its host, slowly replacing the host’s body, as well as growing distinctive spines that erupt out of the host’s body. Taking over motor functions, it compels the host to do two main things, which are to eat more food, and climb to a position that will be good to release spores from.
Fortunately, none of that matters to humans. Cordyceps does not (unlike in the TV show) affect humans that way.
What does Cordyceps do in humans?
Cordyceps (in various strains) is enjoyed as a health supplement, based on a long history of use in Traditional Chinese Medicine, and nowadays it’s coming under a scientific spotlight too.
The main health claims for it are:
Against inflammation
Against aging
Against cancer
For blood sugar management
For heart health
For exercise performance
Sounds great! What does the science say?
There’s a lot more science for the first three (which are all closely related to each other, and often overlapping in mechanism and effect).
So let’s take a look:
Against inflammation
The science looks promising for this, but studies so far have either been in vitro (cell cultures in petri dishes), or else murine in vivo (mouse studies), for example:
In summary: we can see that it has anti-inflammatory properties for mice and in the lab; we’d love to see the results of studies done on humans, though. Also, while it has anti-inflammatory properties, it performed less well than commonly-prescribed anti-inflammatory drugs, for example:
❝C. militaris can modulate airway inflammation in asthma, but it is less effective than prednisolone or montelukast.❞
Against aging
Because examining the anti-aging effects of a substance requires measuring lifespans and repeating the experiment, anti-aging studies do not tend to be done on humans, because they would take lifetimes to perform. To this end, it’s inconvenient, but not a criticism of Cordyceps, that studies have been either mouse studies (short lifespan, mammals like us) or fruit fly studies (very short lifespan, genetically surprisingly similar to us).
The studies have had positive results, with typical lifespan extensions of 15–20%:
Against cancer
Once again, the studies here have been in vitro, or murine in vivo. They do look good though:
In vitro (human cell cultures in a lab):
In vivo (mouse studies):
Summary of these is: Cordyceps quite reliably inhibits tumor growth in vitro (human cell cultures) and in vivo (mouse studies). However, trials in human cancer patients are so far conspicuous by their absence.
For blood sugar management
Cordyceps appears to mimic the action of insulin, without triggering insulin sensitivity. For example:
There were some other rat/mouse studies with similar results. No studies in humans yet.
For heart health
Cordyceps contains adenosine. You may remember that caffeine owes part of its stimulant effect to blocking adenosine, the hormone that makes us feel sleepy. So in this way, Cordyceps partially does the opposite of what caffeine does, and may be useful against arrhythmia:
For exercise performance
A small (30 elderly participants) study found that Cordyceps supplementation improved VO2 max by 7% over the course of six weeks:
However, another small study (22 young athletes) failed to reproduce those results:
In summary…
Cordyceps almost certainly has anti-inflammation, anti-aging, and anti-cancer benefits.
Cordyceps may have other benefits too, but the evidence is thinner on the ground for those, so far.
❤️ OUR SPONSORS MAKE THIS PUBLICATION POSSIBLE
Be Prepared This Summer: Get Your Propolis Throat Spray Now
We've written before about the science-based benefits of honey... When it comes to not only protection against allergies, but also for general antimicrobial action, bees have it covered.
Beekeeper's Naturals take it a step further with their propolis spray!
You may wonder: what is propolis?
Bees make it and use it to line their walls and keep germs out. Beekeeper's Naturals offer it in spray form, to:
soothe scratchy throats
support our immune systems
combat free radical damage in the body
feed the good bacteria in our gut
As the company name suggests, it's all-natural ingredients, all with great science-based benefits. You can check out their ingredients (and explanations of same, with pictures) on their website.
There's a lot to assail the airways this summer, from germs to allergens, so an extra line of defense—and as a bonus, relief from symptoms—could make a huge difference to you and your family!
Psst... 10almonds readers get 20% off the first bottle if you use code ALMOND20 😉
Please do check out our sponsors—they help keep 10almonds free
🌏 AROUND THE WEB
What’s happening in the health world…
More to come tomorrow!
📖 ONE-MINUTE BOOK REVIEW
Built to Move: The Ten Essential Habits to Help You Move Freely and Live Fully - by Kelly starrett & Juliet Starrett
In our everyday lives, for most of us anyway, it's not too important to be able to run a marathon or leg-press a car. Rather more important, however, are such things as:
being able to get up from the floor comfortably
reach something on a high shelf without twinging a shoulder
being able to put our socks on without making a whole plan around this task
get accidentally knocked by an energetic dog or child and not put our back out
etc
Starrett and Starrett, of "becoming a supple leopard" fame, lay out for us how to make sure our mobility stays great. And, if it's not already where it needs to be, how to get there.
The "ten essential habits" mentioned in the subtitle "ten essential habits to help you move freely and live fully", in fact also come with ten tests. No, not in the sense of arduous trials, but rather, mobility tests.
For each test, it's explained to us how to score it out of ten (this is an objective assessment, not subjective). It's then explained how to "level up" whatever score we got, with different advices for different levels of mobility or immobility. And if we got a ten, then of course, we just build the appropriate recommended habit into our daily life, to keep it that way.
The writing style is casual throughout, and a strong point of the book is its very clear illustrations, too.
Bottom line: if you'd like to gain/maintain good mobility (at any age), this book gives a very reliable outline for doing so.
What did you think of today's newsletter?We always love to hear from you, whether you leave us a comment or even just a click in the poll if you're speeding by! |
Wishing you the very best start to the week,
The 10almonds Team