The Orchid That Renovates Your Gut (Gently)

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:

• Dendrobium officinale is an orchid that’s made its way from Traditional Chinese Medicine into modern science.

  • Used successfully to treat and prevent a wide variety of ailments, its mechanism of action is giving your gut microbiota an overhaul, reducing (many specific) harmful microbes and helping (again, many specific) beneficial ones to flourish.

• Buying supplements is often such a lottery. What’s really in them? Where did it come from? Is it actually in a form my body can use?

  • Today’s sponsor, Ritual, has made every stage of its production process transparent to the public, and they also cut no corners when it comes to quality and efficacy.

Read on to learn about these things and more…

👀 WATCH AND LEARN

The fascia system, the lymphatic system, chronic pain, and mobility (7:59)

Learning how optimizing your fascia system can greatly affect the health of your lymphatic system, and eliminate related chronic pain:

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

Prefer text? So do we, but a) they didn’t provide a text version b) actually this video is very informative in a way that would take a lot of writing to show.

That sorrowful-looking fellow in the video thumbnail? That is not a cardboard cutout; it’s a (hopefully well-paid) person in a restrictive fascia-suit, that will be manipulated in various ways, showing the differences it makes to different kinds of mobility, along with other considerations.

Still, perhaps we’ll do a main feature on it one of these days, as it’s an interesting topic.

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

💊 MAIN FEATURE

The Orchid That Renovates Your Gut (Gently)

Dendrobium officinale is an orchid that’s made its way from Traditional Chinese Medicine into modern science.

Read: Traditional Uses, Phytochemistry, Pharmacology, and Quality Control of Dendrobium officinale

To summarize its benefits, we’ll quote from Dr. Paharia’s article featured in our “what’s happening in the health world” section all so recently:

Source: The future of functional foods: leveraging Dendrobium officinale for optimal gut health and disease prevention

We don’t stop at secondary sources, though, so we took a look at the science.

Dr. Wu et al. found (we’ll quote directly for these bullet points):

• DOPs have been shown to influence the gut microbiota, such as the abundance of Lactobacillus, Bifidobacterium, Akkermansia, Bacteroides, and Prevotella, and provide different benefits to the host due to structural differences.

• The dietary intake of DOPs has been shown to improve the composition of the gut microbiome and offers new intervention strategies for metabolic diseases such as obesity and type 2 diabetes as well as inflammatory diseases such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and colitis.

• Compared to drug therapy, intervention with DOPs is not specific and has a longer intervention duration

Source: Structure, Health Benefits, Mechanisms, and Gut Microbiota of Dendrobium officinale Polysaccharides: A Review

 This is consistent with previous research on Dendrobium officinale, such as last year’s:

Source: Dendrobium officinale Xianhu 2 polysaccharide helps forming a healthy gut microbiota and improving host immune system

In summary…

Research so far indicates that this does a lot of good for the gut, in a way that can “kickstart” healthier, self-regulating gut microbiota.

As to its further prospects, check out:

Dendrobium as a new natural source of bioactive for the prevention and treatment of digestive tract diseases: a comprehensive review with future perspectives

Very promising!

Where can I get it?

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

Be warned, it is expensive though!

❤️ OUR SPONSORS MAKE THIS PUBLICATION POSSIBLE

Supplements, Better

Ritual knows the importance of cumulative habits that make a difference to your health every day. But how can we know what will really help?

A thing about their products is that they’re rigorously independently tested and certified, and every stage of their production (ingredients, sources, manufacturing, etc) is made transparent to you, so that you know there's no "funny business" anywhere along the line.

And the products themselves are optimized, as well! We especially love their "synbiotic+" gut health product—it's a prebiotic, probiotic, and postbiotic, all in one—and its capsule form means it gets safely to your colon where it needs to be, instead of being released into your stomach full of acid!

That’s not all they have to offer though… They also have multivitamin blends tailored by age and sex, as well as products for gut health, skin hydration, sleep, and more—so do check out their full range 😎

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

🌍 AROUND THE WEB

What’s happening in the health world…

• Researchers: lifestyle changes can reduce dementia risk by maintaining brain plasticity, but the time to act is now

• Instead of calories and macros, think about the level of food processing, expert says

• AI model accurately predicts breast cancer risk across multiple races

• 5 ways to protect your emotional health over the holidays

• Breaking down barriers: what happens when the vaginal microbiome attacks

• Meal kits are booming, but how do they stack up nutritionally?

• Mailing HPV test kits to patients boosts cervical cancer screening

More to come tomorrow!

📖 ONE-MINUTE BOOK REVIEW

Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence – by Dr. Anna Lembke

We live in an age of abundance, though it often doesn't feel like it. Some of that is due to artificial scarcity, but a lot of it is due to effectively whiting out our dopamine circuitry through chronic overuse.

Psychiatrist Dr. Anna Lembke explores the neurophysiology of pleasure and pain, and how each can (and does) lead to the other. Is the answer to lead a life of extreme neutrality? Not quite.

Rather, simply by being more mindful of how we seek each (yes, both pleasure and pain), we can leverage our neurophysiology to live a better, healthier life—and break/avoid compulsive habits, while we're at it.

That said, the book itself is quite compelling reading, but as Dr. Lembke shows us, that certainly doesn't have to be a bad thing.

Bottom line: if you sometimes find yourself restlessly cycling through the same few apps (or TV channels) looking for dopamine that you're not going to find there, this is the book for you.

Click here to check out Dopamine Nation, and get a handle on yours!

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

The 10almonds Team