"The Longevity Vitamin" (That's Not A Vitamin)

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:

• Scientific publications are making the case for ergothioneine to be classified as a vitamin, as a deficiency of it is associated with various diseases

  • Today’s main feature examines its benefits not just as a potent antioxidant amino acid, but also as a nutraceutical that’s particularly good for the heart, vasculature, and brain.

  • Getting 5mg/day is also associated with a 16% reduced all-cause mortality risk. Not bad!

• 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

Watch and Learn

Going From Chronic Gut Issues To Vibrant Health

Prefer text? The above video will take you to a 10almonds page with a text-overview, as well as the video!

Monday’s Research Review

The Magic of Mushrooms

“The Longevity Vitamin that’s not a vitamin” is a great tagline for what’s actually an antioxidant amino acid nutraceutical, but in this case, we’re not the ones spearheading its PR, but rather, the Journal of Nutritional Science:

Is ergothioneine a “longevity vitamin” limited in the American diet?

It can be found in all foods, to some extent, but usually in much tinier amounts than would be useful. The reason for this is that it’s synthesized by a variety of microbes (mostly fungi and actinobacteria), and enters the food chain via vegetables that are grown in soil that contain such (which is basically all soil, unless you were to go out of your way to sterilize it, or something really unusually happened).

About those fungi? That includes common popular edible fungi, where it is found quite generously. An 85g (3oz) portion of (most) mushrooms contains about 5mg of ergothioneine, the consumption of which is associated with a 16% reduced all-cause mortality:

Association of mushroom consumption with all-cause and cause-specific mortality among American adults: prospective cohort study findings from NHANES III

However… Most Americans don’t eat that many mushrooms, and those polled averaged 1.1mg/day ergothioneine (in contrast with, for example, Italians’ 4.6mg/day average).

Antioxidant properties

While its antioxidant properties aren’t the most exciting quality, they are worth a mention, on account of their potency:

The biology of ergothioneine, an antioxidant nutraceutical

This is also part of its potential bid to get classified as a vitamin, because…

Source: Ergothioneine: a diet-derived antioxidant with therapeutic potential

Healthy aging

Building on from the above, ergothioneine has been specifically identified as being associated with healthy aging and the prevention of cardiometabolic diseases:

Source: Ergothioneine: an underrecognised dietary micronutrient required for healthy ageing?

Good for the heart = good for the brain

As a general rule of thumb, “what’s good for the heart is good for the brain” is almost always true, and it appears to be so in this case, too:

Source: Ergothioneine: A Stress Vitamin with Antiaging, Vascular, and Neuroprotective Roles?

Want to get some?

You can just eat a portion of mushrooms per day! But if you don’t fancy that, it is available as a supplement in convenient 1/day capsule form too.

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

Enjoy!

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

You May Have Missed

• Managing Chronic Pain (Realistically!)

• The Blue Zones' Five Pillars Of Longevity

• Fruit & Veg In The Fridge: Pros & Cons

This Or That?

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Now for today’s choice:

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You (Also) May Have Missed

• We Are Such Stuff As Fish Are Made Of

• The Path to Longevity: How to Reach 100 with the Health and Stamina of a 40-year-old (book)

• Astaxanthin: Super-Antioxidant & Neuroprotectant

One-Minute Book Review

Nutrivore: The Radical New Science for Getting the Nutrients You Need from the Food You Eat – by Dr. Sarah Ballantyne

The core idea of this book is that foods can be assigned a numerical value according to their total nutritional value, and that this number can be used to guide a person's diet such that we will eat, in aggregate, a diet that is more nutritious. So far, so simple.

What Dr. Ballantyne also does, besides explaining and illustrating this system (there are chapters explaining the calculation system, and appendices with values), is also going over what to consider important and what we can let slide, and what things we might need more of to address a wide assortment of potential health concerns. And yes, this is definitely a “positive diet” approach, i.e. it focuses on what to add in, not what to cut out.

The premise of the “positive diet” approach is simple, by the way: if we get a full set of good nutrients, we will be satisfied and not crave unhealthy food.

She also offers a lot of helpful "rules of thumb", and provides a variety of cheat-sheets and suchlike to make things as easy as possible.

There's also a recipes section! Though, it's not huge and it's probably not necessary, but it's just one more "she's thinking of everything" element.

Bottom line: if you'd like a single-volume "Bible of" nutrition-made-easy, this is a very usable tome.

Click here to check out Nutrivore, and start filling up your diet!

Penny For Your Thoughts?

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

The 10almonds Team