Five Flavors & Five Benefits

Plus: what nobody teaches you about strengthening your knees

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The 10almonds Team
April 15, 2024

Today’s almonds have been activated by:

❝Sleep deprivation is an illegal torture method outlawed by the Geneva Convention and international courts, but most of us do it to ourselves❞

⏰ 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:

  • Schisandra chinensis, sometimes called the “five flavor fruit”, but we’re going to stick with its common scientific shorthand “schisandra” in our article, has been used in traditional medicine for centuries, especially in China and Siberia.

    • Today’s main feature examines the science for its benefits for alleviating menopause symptoms, for athletic improvement, against Alzheimer’s, and assorted other benefits.

  • Have you tried everything for sleep and still find yourself getting to sleep later than you’d like, and/or sleeping less soundly than you’d like?

    • Today’s sponsor Cornbread Hemp is offering 30% of their gummies that combine organic CBD with lavender, valerian, and chamomile, for a synergistic soporific effect that’ll have you peacefully snoozing in no time, guaranteed (literally, they offer a guarantee).

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

🤫 A WORD TO THE WISE

Injured At The Super Bowl Parade…

(and a month later, they felt forgotten)

👀 WATCH AND LEARN

What Nobody Teaches You About Strengthening Your Knees (1:44)

This very short video gets straight to the point:

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

YOU MAY HAVE MISSED…

❓ MYSTERY ITEM

It’s a bit of a reach…

Hint: we’re not convinced this one merits the current price, but the idea is sound and can be recreated at home!

YOU MAY HAVE MISSED…

💊 MAIN FEATURE

Five Flavors Of Good Health

Schisandra chinensis, henceforth Schisandra, is also called the “five flavor fruit”, for covering the culinary bases of sweet, salt, bitter, sour, and pungent.

It can be eaten as a fruit (small red berries), juiced from the fruit, or otherwise extracted into supplements (dried powder of the fruit being a common one).

It has long enjoyed usage in various traditional medicines, especially in China and Siberia.

So, what are its health claims, and how does the science stack up?

Menopause

Most of the studies are mouse studies, and we prefer studies on humans, so here’s a small (n=36) randomized clinical trial that concluded…

❝Schisandra chinensis can be a safe and effective complementary medicine for menopausal symptoms, especially for hot flushes, sweating, and heart palpitations❞

Antioxidant (and perhaps more)

Like many berries, it’s a good source of lignans offering antioxidant effects:

Lignans usually have anticancer effects too (which is reasonably, given what is antioxidant is usually anticancer and anti-inflammatory as well, by the same mechanism) but those have not yet been studied in schisandra specifically.

Antihepatotoxicity

In other words, it’s good for your liver. At least, so animal studies tell us, because human studies haven’t been done yet for this one. The effect is largely due to its antioxidant properties, but it seems especially effective for the liver—which is not surprising, giving the liver’s regeneration mechanism.

Anyway, here’s a fascinating study that didn’t even need to use the fruit itself, just the pollen from the plant, it was that potent:

Athletics enhancer

While it’s not yet filling the shelves of sports nutrition stores, we found a small (n=45) study with healthy post-menopausal women who took either 1g of schisandra (experimental group) or 1g of starch (placebo group), measured quadriceps muscle strength and resting lactate levels over the course of a 12 week intervention period, and found:

❝Supplementation of Schisandra chinensis extract can help to improve quadriceps muscle strength as well as decrease lactate level at rest in adult women ❞

Anti-Alzheimers & Anti-Parkinsons

The studies for this are all in vitro, but that’s because it’s hard to find volunteers willing to have their brains sliced and looked at under a microscope while they’re still alive.

Nevertheless, the results are compelling, and it seems uncontroversial to say that schisandra, or specifically Schisandrin B, a compound it contains, has not only anti-inflammatory properties, but also neuroprotective properties, and specifically blocks the formation of excess amyloid-β peptides in the brain (which are critical for the formation of amyloid plaque, as found in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients):

Is it safe?

For most people, yes! Some caveats:

  • As it can stimulate the uterus, it’s not recommended if you’re pregant.

  • Taking more than the recommended amount can worsen symptoms of heartburn, GERD, ulcers, or other illnesses like that.

And as ever, do speak with our own doctor/pharmacist if unsure, as your circumstances may vary and we cannot cover all possibilities here.

Where can I get some?

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

The Brain Health Kitchen: Preventing Alzheimer’s Through Food – by Dr. Annie Fenn

This is a cookbook built around the MIND diet, which we talked about in our "Four Ways To Upgrade The Mediterranean Diet" article.

As such, it's a top-tier gold-standard diet to be following for brain health, and having it as a book of recipes makes actually eating this way a lot easier!

The book does talk about the science first before getting to the recipes, so don't worry, you won't have to reverse engineer the dietary guidelines from the recipes; everything is explained well.

The recipes (of which there are 100) are diverse enough to be interesting without being so complicated as to be difficult. The ingredients are largely nutritional powerhouses, and most if not all can be found in your nearest reasonable-sized supermarket. Also, the recipes are (as you might reasonably expect), very plant-forward, but not entirely plant-based (as you might have guessed from the salmon on the front cover).

Bottom line: if you'd like to eat more healthily for your brain, but are a little stumped on what to do with the four ingredients you remember are brain-healthy, this book will help expand your horizons—not to mention your culinary repertoire!

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

The 10almonds Team