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The Meds That Impair Decision-Making
Plus: 7-minute face fitness for lymphatic drainage & youthful jawline (and more)
The 10almonds Team
September 26, 2024
Today’s almonds have been activated by:
Want better posture? Grab a hula hoop. We may think of it as a kids' toy, but it is actually a great way to increase core strength and use all your muscles to keep the hoop steady.
It’s great for mobility, too!
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:
Impairment to cognitive function is often comorbid with Parkinson’s disease.
Today’s main feature looks at how part of that may be due to Parkinson’s medication which, paradoxically (for restoring a good semblance of dopamine function) increases risk-taking behavior—and how.
We know that 10almonds readers don’t just want to look younger, but ideally to be younger, biologically speaking.
Today’s sponsor, Qualia Senolytic, are offering a potent supplement product that targets and eliminates senescent cells, meaning the ones that get copied forward are the younger cells.
Today’s featured recipe is for a Ghanaian red bean & sweet potato groundnut stew, full of fiber and dense with nutrients—as well as flavor!
Read on to learn more about these things, or click here to visit our archive
A Word To The Wise
Watch and Learn
7-Minute Face Fitness For Lymphatic Drainage & Youthful Jawline (And More)
Valeriia Veksler is a registered nurse with a background in cosmetic medicine. She’s been practicing for 7 years, and on the strength of that, is going to teach us how to give our face some love for 7 minutes:
Prefer text? The above video will take you to a 10almonds page with a text-overview, as well as the video!
Wildcard Wednesday
The Meds That Impair Decision-Making
Impairment to cognitive function is often comorbid with Parkinson’s disease. That is to say: it’s not a symptom of Parkinson’s, but it often occurs in the same people. This may seem natural: after all, both are strongly associated with aging.
However, recent (last month, at time of writing) research has brought to light a very specific way in which medication for Parkinson’s may impair the ability to make sound decisions.
Obviously, this is a big deal, because it can affect healthcare decisions, financial decisions, and more—greatly impacting quality of life.
(in which older people were found more likely to be influenced by the impulsive financial preferences of others than their younger counterparts, when other factors are controlled for)
As for how this pans out when it comes to Parkinson’s meds…
Pramipexole (PPX)
This drug can, due to an overlap in molecular shape, mimic dopamine in the brains of people who don’t have enough—such as those with Parkinson’s disease. This (as you might expect) helps alleviate Parkinson’s symptoms.
However, researchers found that mice treated with PPX and given a touch-screen based gambling game picked the high-risk, high reward option much more often. In the hopes of winning strawberry milkshake (the reward), they got themselves subjected to a lot of blindingly-bright flashing lights (the risk, to which untreated mice were much more averse, as this is very stressful for a mouse).
You may be wondering: did the mice have Parkinson’s?
The answer: kind of; they had been subjected to injections with 6-hydroxydopamine, which damages dopamine-producing neurons similarly to Parkinson’s.
This result was somewhat surprising, because one would expect that a mouse whose depleted dopamine was being mimicked by a stand-in (thus, doing much of the job of dopamine) would be less swayed by the allure of gambling (a high-dopamine activity), since gambling is typically most attractive to those who are desperate to find a crumb of dopamine somewhere.
They did find out why this happened, by the way, the PPX hyperactivated the external globus pallidus (also called GPe, and notwithstanding the name, this is located deep inside the brain). Chemically inhibiting this area of the brain reduced the risk-taking activity of the mice.
This has important implications for Parkinson’s patients, because:
on an individual level, it means this is a side effect of PPX to be aware of
on a research-and-development level, it means drugs need to be developed that specifically target the GPe, to avoid/mitigate this side effect.
You can read the study in full here:
Don’t want to get Parkinson’s in the first place?
While nothing is a magic bullet, there are things that can greatly increase or decrease Parkinson’s risk. Here’s a big one, as found recently (last week, at the time of writing):
Also: knowing about its onset sooner rather than later is scary, but beneficial. So, with that in mind…
Finally, because Parkinson’s disease is theorized to be caused by a dysfunction of alpha-synuclein clearance (much like the dysfunction of beta-amyloid clearance, in the case of Alzheimer’s disease), this means that having a healthy glymphatic system (glial cells doing the same clean-up job as the lymphatic system, but in the brain) is critical:
Take care!
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Please do visit our sponsors—they help keep 10almonds free
This Or That?
Vote on Which is Healthier
Yesterday we asked you to choose between anchovies and sardines—we picked the sardines (click here to read about why), as did 79% of you!
Now for today’s choice:
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Click on whichever you think is better for you!
Bonus (Sponsored) Recommendation
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Recipes Worth Sharing
Ghanaian Red Bean & Sweet Potato Groundnut Stew
This is a dish popular in principle throughout West Africa. We say “in principle” because that’s a big place, and there is a lot of regional variation. The archetypal peanut stew is from Senegal (as maafe) or Mali (as tigadèguèna), but for its more balanced nutritional profile we’ve chosen one from Ghana—and since there are regional variations within Ghana too, we should specify that this one is from the south:
Click below for our full recipe, and learn its secrets:
One-Minute Book Review
"You Just Need to Lose Weight" And 19 Other Myths About Fat People – by Aubrey Gordon
We’ve previously reviewed another book by this author, “What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat”, and this time, she’s doing some important mythbusting.
The titular “you just need to lose weight” is a commonly-taken easy-out for many doctors, to avoid having to dispense actual treatment for an actual condition. Whether or not weight loss would help in a given situation is often immaterial; “kicking the can down the road” is the goal.
Most of the book is divided into 20 chapters, each of them devoted to debunking one myth. Think of it like 10almonds’ “Mythbusting Friday” edition (indeed, we did one about obesity), but with an entire book, and as much room as she needs to provide much more detail than we can ever get into in a single article.
And far from being a mere polemic, she does indeed provide that detail—this is clearly a very well-researched book, above and beyond the author’s own personal experience. Further, all the key points are illustrated and articulated clearly, making the book’s ideas very comprehensible.
The style is pop-science, but with frequent bibliographical references for relevant sources.
Bottom line: for some readers, this book will come as a great validation; for others, it may be eye-opening. Either way, it’s a very worthwhile read.
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! |
Wishing you a wonderful Wednesday full of wellness,
The 10almonds Team
