A Supplement To Rival St. John's Wort Against Depression

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Today’s 30-Second Summary

If you don’t have time to read the whole email today, here are some key takeaways:

• S-Adeonsyl-L-Methionone (SAMe) is a chemical found naturally in the body, and/but enjoyed widely as a supplement.

  • People often take it for its claimed benefits against depression, osteoarthritis, and liver disease

  • Today’s main feature explains why we think it’s good against depression, weak against osteoarthritis, and its effects against liver disease (if any) are honestly unknown

• 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

The Truth About Yoga And Weight Loss (5:52)

“Can you lose weight with yoga?” is a common question. The answer’s not simple, unless we oversimplify to “you can lose weight with pretty much anything, one way or another”, but Liv’s answer here is well worth hearing:

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

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💊 MAIN FEATURE

Do You Feel The SAMe?

S-Adeonsyl-L-Methionone (SAMe) is a chemical found naturally in the body, and/but enjoyed widely as a supplement. The main reasons people take it are:

• Improve mood (antidepressant effect)

• Improve joints (reduce osteoarthritis symptoms)

• Improve liver (detoxifying effect)

Let’s see what the science says for each of those claims…

Does it improve mood?

It seems to perform comparably to St. John’s Wort (which is good; it performs comparably to Prozac).

Best of all, it does this with fewer contraindications (St. John’s Wort has so many contraindications).

Here’s how they stack up:

St. John's wort and S-Adenosyl Methionine as "natural" alternatives to conventional antidepressants in the era of the suicidality boxed warning: what is the evidence for clinically relevant benefit?

This looks very promising, though it’d be nice to see a larger body of research, to be sure.

Does it reduce osteoarthritis symptoms?

The good news: it performs comparably to ibuprofen, with fewer side effects!

The bad news: it also performs comparably to placebo!

Read into that what you will about ibuprofen’s usefulness vs OA symptoms.

Read all about it:

S-Adenosylmethionine for osteoarthritis of the knee or hip

If you were hoping for something for OA or similar symptoms, you might like our previous main features:

• Avoiding/Managing Osteoarthritis

• Managing Chronic Pain (Realistically!)

• The 7 Approaches To Pain Management

• (Science-Based) Alternative Pain Relief

Does it help against liver disease?

According to adverts for SAMe: absolutely!

According to science: we don’t know

The science for this is so weak that it’d be unworthy of mention if it weren’t for the fact that SAMe is so widely sold as good against hepatotoxicity.

To be clear: maybe it really is great! Science hasn’t yet disproved its usefulness either.

It is popularly assumed to be beneficial due to there being an association between lower levels of SAMe in the body (remember, it is also produced inside our bodies) and development of liver disease, especially cholestasis.

Here’s an example of what pretty much every study we found was like (inconclusive research based mostly on mice):

S-adenosylmethionine in liver health, injury, and cancer

For other options for liver health, consider:

How To Unfatty A Fatty Liver

Is it safe?

Safety trials have been done ranging from 3 months to 2 years, with no serious side effects coming to light. So, it appears quite safe.

That said, as with anything, there are contraindications, such as:

• if you have bipolar disorder, skip this unless directed by your health care provider, because it may worsen the symptoms of mania

• if you are on SSRIs or other serotonergic drugs, it may interact with those

• if you are immunocompromised, you might want to skip it can increase the risk of P. carinii growth in such cases

As always, do speak with your doctor/pharmacist for personalized advice.

Summary

SAMe’s evidence-based qualities seem to stack up as follows:

• Against depression: good

• Against osteoarthritis: weak

• Against liver disease: unknown

As for safety, it has been found quite safe for most people.

Where can I get it?

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

Enjoy!

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📖 ONE-MINUTE BOOK REVIEW

Limitless Expanded Edition: Upgrade Your Brain, Learn Anything Faster, and Unlock Your Exceptional Life – by Jim Kwik

This is a little flashier in presentation than we usually go for here, but the content is actually very good. Indeed, we’ve featured Jim Kwik before, with different, but also good content—in that case, physical exercises that strengthen the brain.

This time, Kwik (interspersed with motivational speeches that you may or may not benefit from, but they are there) offers a step-by-step course in improving various metrics of cognitive ability. His methods were produced by trial and error, and now have been refined and enjoyed by man. If it sounds like a sales gimmick, it is a bit, but the good news is that everything you need to benefit is in the book; it’s not about upselling to a course or “advanced” books or whatnot.

The style is enthusiastically conversational, and instructions when given (which is often) are direct and clear.

Bottom line: one of the most critical abilities a brain can have is the ability to improve itself, so whatever level your various cognitive abilities are at right now, if you apply this book, you will almost certainly improve in one or more areas, which will make it worth the price of the book.

Click here to check out Limitless, and find out what you can do!

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

The 10almonds Team