Boost Your Digestive Enzymes

Plus: intermittent fasting for 4 key brain benefits

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The 10almonds Team
March 26, 2024

Today’s almonds have been activated by:

❝To get people to eat well, don’t say a word about health, just cook fantastic food for them❞

⏰ 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:

  • Digestive problems are common, affecting around 40% of Americans and around 35% of people globally

    • We can improve on that by enjoying a gut-healthy diet, and potentially taking probiotic supplements

    • Today’s main feature examines the option of taking supplementary digestive enzymes, and what the science has to say about those!

  • As we age, our collagen levels tend to get depleted more easily. Collagen is important not just for youthful good looks, but also for the health of bones and joints

    • Today’s sponsor NativePath are offering high-quality collagen without additives or harmful impurities

Read on to learn more about these things, or click here to visit our archive

🤫 A WORD TO THE WISE

Intermittent Fasting Brain Benefits

Dr. Hayley O’Neill explains the 4 key ways that IF makes our brains healthier:

👀 WATCH AND LEARN

Laura Try: “I Tried a Posture Corrector for 100 Days” (9:15)

Here's what she found:

Prefer text? You might like our previous main feature:

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

YOU MAY HAVE MISSED…

❓ MYSTERY ITEM

In The Frame…

Hint: today’s mystery item will allow you to go up in the world

YOU MAY HAVE MISSED…

💊 MAIN FEATURE

We’ll Try To Make This Easy To Digest

Do you have a digestion-related problem?

If so, you’re far from alone; around 40% of Americans have digestive problems serious enough to disrupt everyday life:

…which puts Americans just a little over the global average of 35%:

Mostly likely on account of the Standard American Diet, or “SAD” as it often gets abbreviated in scientific literature.

There’s plenty we can do to improve gut health, for example:

Today we’re going to be examining digestive enzyme supplements!

What are digestive enzymes?

Digestive enzymes are enzymes that break down food into stuff we can use. Important amongst them are:

  • Protease: breaks down proteins (into amino acids)

  • Amylase: breaks down starches (into sugars)

  • Lipase: breaks down fats (into fatty acids)

All three are available as popular supplements to aid digestion. How does the science stack up for them?

Protease

For this, we only found animal studies like this one, but the results have been promising:

Amylase

Again, the studies for this alone (not combined with other enzymes) have been solely from animal agriculture; here’s an example:

Lipase

Unlike for protease and amylase, now we have human studies as well, and here’s what they had to say:

❝Lipase supplementation significantly reduced stomach fullness without change of EGG.

Furthermore, lipase supplementation may be helpful in control of FD symptom such as postprandial symptoms❞

(short answer: yes, it is)

More studies found the same, such as:

All together now!

When we look at studies for combination supplementation of digestive enzymes, more has been done, and/but it’s (as you might expect) less specific.

The following paper gives a good rundown:

Is it safe?

For most people it is quite safe, but if taking high doses for a long time it can cause problems, and also there may be complications if you have diabetes, are otherwise immunocompromised, or have some other conditions (listed towards the end of the above-linked paper, along with further information that we can’t fit in here).

As ever, check with your doctor/pharmacist if you’re not completely sure!

Want some?

We don’t sell them, but for your convenience, here’s an example product on Amazon that contains all three 😎

Enjoy!

YOU MAY HAVE MISSED…

❤️ OUR SPONSORS MAKE THIS PUBLICATION POSSIBLE

NativePath Collagen

Pop quiz: What’s the body’s most abundant protein?

The answer: Collagen.

NativePath's Certified Grass-Fed Collagen Powder is made from grass-fed, pasture-raised cows and contains 18 grams of protein per suggested serving.

Start incorporating it daily to support skin elasticity, joint health, bone strength, and muscle growth and maintenance.

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

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📖 ONE-MINUTE BOOK REVIEW

Radiant Rebellion: Reclaim Aging, Practice Joy, and Raise a Little Hell – by Karen Walrond

In health terms, we are often about fighting aging here. But to be more specific, what we’re fighting in those cases is not truly aging itself, so much as age-related decline.

Karen Walrond makes a case that we’ve made from the very start of 10almonds (but she wrote a whole book about it), that there’s merit in looking at what we can and can’t control about aging, doing what we reasonably can, and embracing what we can’t.

And yes, embracing, not merely accepting. This is not a downer of a book; it’s a call to revolution. It asks us to be proud of our grey hairs, to see our smile-lines around our eyes as the sign of a lived-in body, and even to embrace some of the unavoidable “actual decline” things as part of the journey of life. Maybe we’re not as strong as we used to be and now need a grippety-doodah to open jars; not everyone gets to live long enough to experience that! How lucky we are.

Perhaps most importantly, she bids us be the change we want to see in the world, and inspire others with our choices and actions, and shake off ageist biases for good.

Bottom line: if you want to foster a better attitude to aging not only for yourself, but also those around you, then this is a top-tier book for that.

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

The 10almonds Team