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Hawthorn For The Heart (& More)

Plus: is mammography AI worth the cost?

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The 10almonds Team
February 27, 2024

Today’s almonds have been activated by:

Fun fact: your kidneys (assuming they are healthy, and you have two of them) can process around 1 liter of water per hour, call that about 4 cups/glasses.

If you drink water faster than your kidneys can process it, you can become ill. If you start feeling light-headed and yet at the same time headachy, that’s a likely sign of overhydration (swelling on the brain is a symptom and can be dangerous if uncorrected).

The fix is generally easy (go pee, eat some salty food, and rest), but it’s worth bearing in mind that “little and often” really is better for hydration than “ok I got my 8 glasses in”.

⏰ 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:

  • Most (edible) berries contain a lot of useful phytonutrients, but Hawthorn (Crataegus sp.) stands out for heart health

    • Today’s main feature looks at its antidiabetic, antihypertensive, and cardioprotective benefits, amongst others

    • It also appears to be good against anxiety!

  • Being unable to easily participate in spoken conversations is not just an inconvenience; it’s also a [causal, fixable] risk factor for age-related cognitive decline.

    • Today’s sponsor, Hear.com, are offering the most cutting-edge dual-processing technology in hearing aids that isolate and separate speech from background noise, now with their latest most advanced device yet!

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

🤫 A WORD TO THE WISE

Mammography AI Can Cost Patients Extra

KFF Health News’ Michelle Andrews asks: is it worth it?

👀 WATCH AND LEARN

Yoga For Bathroom Benefits

This one’s not glamorous, but it may well be useful:

You’ll notice that we’re now hosting these videos on our website, so that we can have room to provide a bit more context. Watch and enjoy!

YOU MAY HAVE MISSED…

💊 MAIN FEATURE

Hawthorn, The Heart-Healthy Helper

Hawthorn, a berry of the genus Crataegus (there are many species, but they seem to give more or less the same benefits), has been enjoyed for hundreds of years, if not thousands, as a herbal remedy for many ailments, mostly of the cardiovascular, digestive, and/or endocrine systems:

Antioxidant & Anti-inflammatory

Like most berries, it’s full of helpful polyphenols, with antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties. Indeed, as Dr. Nabavi et al. wrote,

❝Crataegus monogyna Jacq. (hawthorn) is one of the most important edible plants of the Rosaceae family and is also used in traditional medicine.

Growing evidence has shown that this plant has various interesting physiological and pharmacological activities due to the presence of different bioactive natural compounds.

In addition, scientific evidence suggests that the toxicity of hawthorn is negligible. ❞

While “the toxicity of hawthorn is negligible” may be reasonably considered a baseline for recommending an edible plant, it’s still important as just that: a baseline. It’s good to know that berries are safe, after all!

More positively, about those antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties:

👆 This one was a mouse study, but it’s important as it about modulating liver injury after being fed a high fructose diet.

In other words: it a) helps undo the biggest cause of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, b) logically, likely guards against diabetes also (by the same mechanism)

Anti-Diabetes Potential

Curious about that latter point, we looked for studies, and found, for example:

Noteworthily, those studies are from the past couple of years, which is probably why we’re not seeing many human trials for this yet—everything has to be done in order, and there’s a lengthy process between each.

We did find some human trials with hawthorn in diabetes patients, for example:

…but as you see, that’s testing not its antidiabetic potential, so far demonstrated only in mice and rats (so far as we could find), but rather its blood pressure lowering effects, using diabetic patients as a sample.

Blood pressure benefits

Hawthorn has been studied specifically for its hypotensive effect, for example:

As an extra bonus, did you notice in the conclusion,

❝Furthermore, a trend towards a reduction in anxiety (p = 0.094) was also observed in those taking hawthorn compared with the other groups.

These findings warrant further study, particularly in view of the low dose of hawthorn extract used.❞

…it seems that not a lot more study has been done yet, but that is promising too!

Other blood metrics

So, it has antidiabetic and antihypertensive benefits, what of blood lipids?

And as for arterial plaque?

👆 here it was tested alongside another herb, and performed well (also against placebo).

In summary…

Hawthorn (Crataegus sp.) is…

  • a potent berry containing many polyphenols with good antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects

  • looking promising against diabetes, but research for this is still in early stages

  • found to have other cardioprotective effects (antihypertensive, improves lipid profiles), too

  • considered to have negligible toxicity

Where can I get it?

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

Enjoy!

YOU MAY HAVE MISSED…

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📖 ONE-MINUTE BOOK REVIEW

HBD: The Human Being Diet – by Petronella Ravenshear

We don’t often review diet books, so why did this one catch our attention? The answer lies in its comprehensive nature without being excessively long and complex.

Ravenshear (a nutritionist) brings a focus on metabolic balance, and what will and won’t work for keeping it healthy.

The first part of the book is mostly informational; covering such things as blood sugar balance, gut health, hormones, and circadian rhythm considerations, amongst others.

The second, larger part of the book is mostly instructional; do this and that, don’t do the other, guidelines on quantities and timings, and what things may be different for some people, and what to do about those.

The style is conversational and light, but well-grounded in good science.

Bottom line: if you’d like a “one-stop shop” for giving your diet an overhaul, this book is a fine choice.

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

The 10almonds Team