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Reflexology: What The Science Says
Plus: what happens to your body when you eat raw garlic every day
The 10almonds Team
August 30, 2024
In partnership with
When grocery shopping, decide your priority in advance. Not just “health”, but prioritizing for example (pick one) heart-healthiness, gut-healthiness, anti-inflammation, etc.
These choices will often yield the same foods, because a lot of foods are like that! But focusing on just one defineable chunk of science is a lot easier, and a lot more likely to go better, than a vague idea of “healthy” which can often be little more than an appeal to emotions and likely to prey on implicit biases.
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:
Reflexology is one of the Western world’s most popular alternative therapies, so how does the science stack up for it?
Today’s main feature examines the evidence for reflexology’s usefulness, and its most likely mechanism of action, based on that evidence.
If you've wanted to enjoy cannabis but have been put off by the harshness of smoking or vaping, you're not alone.
Today’s sponsor Mood are offering federally-legal rapid-onset THC gummies that can have you “feeling right” in just 5 minutes
Today’s featured recipe is for teriyaki chickpea burgers—a lot healthier than they look, and just as tasty!
Read on to learn more about these things, or click here to visit our archive
A Word To The Wise
Watch and Learn
What Happens To Your Body When You Eat Raw Garlic Everyday
Garlic’s benefits are not all in its most talked-about active compound, allicin (some are in other parts of the garlic), but the allicin is certainly very potent. However, allicin breaks down easily, which means that cooking reduces its value greatly, meaning that for health purposes, it is best consumed raw. Pickled garlic cloves are great, by the way, and you should try them if you haven’t already:
Prefer text? The above video will take you to a 10almonds page with a text-overview, as well as the video!
Mythbusting Friday
How Does Reflexology Work, Really?
In Wednesday’s newsletter, we asked you for your opinion of reflexology, and got the above-depicted, below-described set of responses:
About 63% said “It works by specific nerves connecting the feet and hands to various specific organs, triggering healing remotely”
About 26% said “It works by realigning the body’s energies (e.g. qi, ki, prana, etc), removing blockages and improving health“
About 11% said “It works by placebo, at best, and has no evidence for any efficacy beyond that”
So, what does the science say?
It works by realigning the body’s energies (e.g. qi, ki, prana, etc), removing blockages and improving health: True or False?
False, or since we can’t prove a negative: there is no reliable scientific evidence for this.
Further, there is no reliable scientific evidence for the existence of qi, ki, prana, soma, mana, or whatever we want to call it.
To save doubling up, we did discuss this in some more detail, exploring the notion of qi as bioelectrical energy, including a look at some unreliable clinical evidence for it (a study that used shoddy methodology, but it’s important to understand what they did wrong, to watch out for such), when we looked at [the legitimately very healthful practice of] qigong, a couple of weeks ago:
As for reflexology specifically: in terms of blockages of qi causing disease (and thus being a putative therapeutic mechanism of action for attenuating disease), it’s an interesting hypothesis but in terms of scientific merit, it was pre-emptively supplanted by germ theory and other similarly observable-and-measurable phenomena.
We say “pre-emptively”, because despite orientalist marketing, unless we want to count some ancient pictures of people getting a foot massage and say it is reflexology, there is no record of reflexology being a thing before 1913 (and that was in the US, by a laryngologist working with a spiritualist to produce a book that they published in 1917).
It works by specific nerves connecting the feet and hands to various specific organs, triggering healing remotely: True or False?
False, or since we can’t prove a negative: there is no reliable scientific evidence for this.
A very large independent review of available scientific literature found the current medical consensus on reflexology is that:
Reflexology is effective for: anxiety (but short lasting), edema, mild insomnia, quality of sleep, and relieving pain (short term: 2–3 hours)
Reflexology is not effective for: inflammatory bowel disease, fertility treatment, neuropathy and polyneuropathy, acute low back pain, sub acute low back pain, chronic low back pain, radicular pain syndromes (including sciatica), post-operative low back pain, spinal stenosis, spinal fractures, sacroiliitis, spondylolisthesis, complex regional pain syndrome, trigger points / myofascial pain, chronic persistent pain, chronic low back pain, depression, work related injuries of the hip and pelvis
(the above is a fascinating read, by the way, and its 50 pages go into a lot more detail than we have room to here)
Now, those items that they found it effective for, looks suspiciously like a short list of things that placebo is often good for, and/or any relaxing activity.
Another review was not so generous:
❝The best evidence available to date does not demonstrate convincingly that reflexology is an effective treatment for any medical condition❞
Source: Is reflexology an effective intervention? A systematic review of randomised controlled trials
In short, from the available scientific literature, we can surmise:
Some researchers have found it to have some usefulness against chiefly psychosomatic conditions
Other researchers have found the evidence for even that much to be uncompelling
It works by placebo, at best, and has no evidence for any efficacy beyond that: True or False?
Mostly True; of course reflexology runs into similar problems as acupuncture when it comes to testing against placebo:
…but not quite as bad, since it is easier to give a random foot massage while pretending it is a clinical treatment, than to fake putting needles into key locations.
However, as the paper we cited just above (in answer to the previous True/False question) shows, reflexology does not appear to meaningfully outperform placebo—which points to the possibility that it does work by placebo, and is just a placebo treatment on the high end of placebo (because the placebo effect is real, does work, isn’t “nothing”, and some placebos work better than others).
For more on the fascinating science and useful (applicable in daily life!) practicalities of how placebo does work, check out:
Take care!
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This Or That?
Vote on Which is Healthier
Yesterday we asked you to choose between feta and parmesan—we picked the parmesan (click here to read about why), as did only 27% of you!
Now for today’s choice:
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Click on whichever you think is better for you!
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Recipes Worth Sharing
Teriyaki Chickpea Burgers
Burgers are often not considered the healthiest food, but they can be! Ok, so the teriyaki sauce component itself isn't the healthiest, but the rest of this recipe is, and with all the fiber this contains, it's a net positive healthwise, even before considering the protein, vitamins, minerals, and assorted phytonutrients:
Click below for our full recipe, and learn its secrets:
One-Minute Book Review
Peaceful Kitchen: More than 100 Cozy Plant-Based Recipes to Comfort the Body and Nourish the Soul – by Catherine Perez
The author, a keen cook and Registered Dietician with a Master’s in same, covers the basics of the science of nutrition as relevant to her recipes, but first and foremost this is not a science textbook—it’s a cookbook, and its pages contain more love for the art than citations for the (perfectly respectable) science.
Mexican and Dominican cuisine are the main influences in this book, but there are dishes from around the world too.
The recipes themselves are… Comparable in difficulty to the things we often feature in our recipes section here at 10almonds. They’re probably not winning any restaurants Michelin stars, but they’re not exactly student survival recipes either. They’re made from mostly non-obscure whole foods, nutritionally-dense ingredients at that, with minimal processed foods involved.
That said, she does take a “add, don’t subtract” approach to nutrition, i.e. focussing more on adding in diversity of plants than on “don’t eat this; don’t eat that” mandates.
If there’s any criticism to be levelled at the book, it’s that in most cases we’d multiply the spices severalfold, but that’s not a big problem as readers can always judge that individually; she’s given the basic information of which spices in which proportions, which is the key knowledge.
Bottom line: if you’re looking to expand your plant-based cooking repertoire, this one is a fine choice.
Penny For Your Thoughts?
What did you think of today's newsletter?We always love to hear from you, whether you leave us a comment or even just a click in the poll if you're speeding by! |
May today see you well-prepared for the coming weekend,
The 10almonds Team
