Potatoes & Anxiety

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:

• Potatoes’ glycemic index depends a lot on how we cook them—and even the highest end of it (and resultant blood sugar spikes, which can cause symptoms of anxiety, amongst others) can be tempered with some tweaks.

  • Diet drinks may also affect blood sugar levels, insulin resistance and gut microbiome—despite often being recommended in place of sugary drinks.

• 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 about these things and more…

👀 WATCH AND LEARN

How to double your brain power | Tiago Forte (6:10)

How do we deal with information overload? Build a second brain, explains Tiago Forte:

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

Big-brained menu:

• 0:00 | Creativity under fire

• 1:10 | The information abundance problem

• 2:22 | “You need a second brain”

• 3:24 | How to begin preserving your creativity

• 5:04 | Unlocking productive creativity

Prefer text? Click here to read the transcript 🙂

❓ MAIN FEATURE

It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!

Have a question or a request? You can always hit “reply” to any of our emails, or use the feedback widget at the bottom!

In cases where we’ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future too—there’s always more to say!

As ever: if the question/request can be answered briefly, we’ll do it here in our Q&A Thursday edition. If not, we’ll make a main feature of it shortly afterwards!

So, no question/request too big or small 😎

❝I don't like to admit it but I am getting old. Recently, I had my first "fall" (ominous word!) I was walking across some wet decking and, before I knew what had happened, my feet were shooting forwards, and I crashed to the ground. Luckily I wasn't seriously damaged. But I was wondering whether you can give us some advice about how best to fall. Maybe there are some good videos on the subject? I would like to be able to practice falling so that it doesn't come as such a shock when it happens!❞

This writer has totally done the same! You might like our recent main feature on the topic:

Fall Special

…if you’ll pardon the pun 😉

❝I recall that Charles Darwin (of Evolution fame) used to spend a day a month in bed in order to maintain his physical and psychological equilibrium. Do you see merit in the idea?❞

Well, it certainly sounds wonderful! Granted, it may depend on what you do in bed :p

Descartes did a lot of his work from bed (and also a surprising amount of it while hiding in an oven, but that’s another story), which was probably not so good for the health.

As for Darwin, his health was terrible in quite a lot of ways, so he may not be a great model.

However! Certainly taking a break is well-established as an important and healthful practice:

How To Rest More Efficiently (Yes, Really)

❝My other half considers potatoes a wonder food, except when fried. I don’t. I find, when I am eating potatoes I put on weight; and, when I’m not eating them, I lose it. Also, although I can’t swear to it, potatoes also make me feel a little anxious (someone once told me it could have something to do with where they are on the "glycemic index"). What does the science say?❞

The glycemic index of potatoes depends on the kind of potato (obviously) and also, less obviously, how it’s prepared. For a given white potato, boiling (which removes a lot of starch) might produce a GI of around 60, while instant mash (basically: potato starch) can be more like 80. For reference, pure glucose is 100. And you probably wouldn’t take that in the same quantity you’d take potato, and expect to feel good!

So: as for anxiety, it could be, since spiked blood sugars can cause mood swings, including anxiety.

Outside of the matter of blood sugars, the only reference we could find for potatoes causing anxiety was fried potatoes specifically:

Source: High fried food consumption impacts anxiety and depression due to lipid metabolism disturbance and neuroinflammation

…which heavily puts the blame not on the potatoes themselves, but on acrylamide (the orange/brown stuff that is made by the Maillard reaction of cooking starches in the absence of water, e.g. by frying, roasting, etc).

Here’s a very good overview of that, by the way:

A Review on Acrylamide in Food: Occurrence, Toxicity, and Mitigation Strategies

Back on the core topic of potatoes and GI and blood sugar spikes and anxiety, you might benefit from a few tweaks that will allow you to enjoy potatoes without spiking blood sugars:

10 Ways To Balance Blood Sugars

Enjoy!

📊 POLL

We turn the tables and ask you a question…

We’ll then talk about this tomorrow:

❤️ OUR SPONSORS MAKE THIS PUBLICATION POSSIBLE

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*Parts of aging, anyway! We’ve written before about the importance of collagen for far more than just youthful skin—it’s also critical for the health of joints and bones!

Most collagen supplements on the market are made from industrial by-products of animal agriculture, and contain artificial ingredients.

What NativePath does differently is focus on keeping things as close to nature as possible, with the highest quality (and purest) ingredients.

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

🌏 AROUND THE WEB

What’s happening in the health world…

• Not getting enough sleep? Your vascular cells are drowning in oxidants

• Diet drinks may affect blood sugar levels, insulin resistance and gut microbiome

• Liver cancer: risk factors and prevention

• Supercharge your kale juice: fermentation ramps up antioxidant and anti-inflammatory powers

• Could an antihypertensive drug have independent benefits for longevity?

• Doctors abandon a diagnosis used only by police to justify custody deaths. It might live on anyway, in law.

• Hormones and high blood pressure: study reveals endocrine culprits and targeted treatments

More to come tomorrow!

📖 ONE-MINUTE BOOK REVIEW

I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life – by Ed Yong

A little while back we reviewed a book (Planet of Viruses) about the role of viruses in our lives, beyond the obvious. Today's book gives the same treatment to microbes in general—mostly bacteria.

We all know about pathogens, and we all know about gut microbiota and that some (hopefully the majority) there are good for our health. This book covers those things too, but also much more.

Pulitzer Prize-winning science writer Ed Yong takes a big picture view (albeit, of some very small things) and looks at the many ways microbes keep us alive, directly or indirectly. From the microbes that convert certain proteins in breast milk into a form that babies can digest (yes, this means we produce nutrients in breast milk that have been evolved solely to feed that bacterium), to those without which agriculture would simply not work, we're brought to realize how much our continued existence is contingent on our trillions of tiny friends.

The style throughout is easy-reading pop-science, very accessible. There's also plenty in terms of practical take-away value, when it comes to adjusting our modern lives to better optimize the benefits we get from microbes—inside and out.

Bottom line: if you'd like to learn about the role of microbes in our life beyond "these ones are pathogens" and "these ones help our digestion", this is the book for you.

Click here to check out I Contain Multitudes, and learn more about yours and those around you!

🗞️ OTHER NEWSLETTERS WE LOVE

Wishing you a good health in all ways great and small,

The 10almonds Team