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⏰ 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:

• Water fluoridation can be good for our teeth, in moderation

• Too much fluorine can be bad for the teeth, though!

• Many people are concerned about neurological harm, but the doses involved are generally considered to be well below safety limits (this is controversial however, and we’ll go into more detail later)

• Our artery walls can get lined with all sorts of guck—it’s a lot more than just cholesterol, which is just one part of it

  • See today’s main feature to learn more about what happens there!

• A heart healthy diet can reverse this if it’s not too far gone—after a certain point, medical intervention may be required, though

• It’s vitally important to keep our brains sharp as we age

  • Today’s sponsor, Brilliant, are offering 10almonds subscribers 30 days free use of their habit-building daily learning app

Read on to learn about these things and more…

👀 WATCH AND LEARN

What Happens When You Overeat?

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❓ 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 watched a documentary recently on Fluoride in our drinking water & the dangers of it. Why are we poisoning our water?❞

This is a great question, and it certainly is controversial. It sounds like the documentary you watched was predominantly or entirely negative, but there’s a lot of science to back both sides of this, and it’s not even that the science is contradictory (it’s not). It’s that what differs is people’s opinions about whether benefiting one thing is worth creating a risk to another, and that means looking at:

• What is the risk associated with taking no action (error of omission)?

• What is the risk associated with taking an action (error of commission)?

The whole topic is worth a main feature, but to summarize a few key points:

• Water fluoridation is considered good for the prevention of dental cavities

• Water fluoridation aims to deliver fluoride and doses far below dangerous levels

  • This requires working on consumer averages, though

• ”Where do we put the safety margins?” is to some extent a subjective question, in terms of trading off one aspect of health for another

• Too much fluoride can also be bad for the teeth (at least cosmetically, creating little white* spots)

• Detractors of fluoride tend to mostly be worried about neurological harm

  • However, the doses in public water supplies are almost certainly far below the levels required to cause this harm.

    • That said, again this is working on consumer averages, though.

• A good guide is: watch your teeth! Those white* spots will be “the canary in the coal mine” of more serious harm that could potentially come from higher levels due to overconsumption of fluorine.

*Teeth are not supposed to be pure white. The “Hollywood smile” is a lie. Teeth are supposed to be a slightly off-white, ivory color. Anything whiter than that is adding something else that shouldn’t be there, or stripping something off that should be there.

❝I've had long covid fatigue for over 2 years. Is anyone having success in overcoming this❞

This is a good question, and probably something affecting a lot of people, and definitely worth a main feature sometime in the next week!

So watch this space.

❝How does your diet change clean out your arteries of the bad cholesterol?❞

There’s good news and bad news here, and they can both be delivered with a one-word reply:

Slowly.

Or rather: what’s being cleaned out is mostly not the LDL (bad) cholesterol, but rather, the result of that.

When our diet is bad for cardiovascular health, our arteries get fatty deposits on their walls. Cholesterol gets stuck here too, but that’s not the main physical problem.

Our body’s natural defenses come into action and try to clean it up, but they (for example macrophages, a kind of white blood cell that consumes invaders and then dies, before being recycled by the next part of the system) often get stuck and become part of the buildup (called atheroma), which can lead to atherosclerosis and (if calcium levels are high) hardening of the arteries, which is the worst end of this.

This can then require medical attention, precisely because the body can’t remove it very well—especially if you are still maintaining a heart-unhealthy diet, thus continuing to add to the mess.

However, if it is not too bad yet, yes, a dietary change alone will reverse this process. Without new material being added to the arterial walls, the body’s continual process of rejuvenation will eventually fix it, given time (free from things making it worse) and resources.

In fact, your arteries can be one of the quickest places for your body to make something better or worse, because the blood is the means by which the body moves most things (good or bad) around the body.

All the more reason to take extra care of it, since everything else depends on it!

You might also like our previous main feature:

All Things Heart Health

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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Best yet, it's also designed to make it as easy as possible to make learning a bite-size daily habit. In other words, instead of a scheduling commitment for classes, it's something you can do while you drink your morning coffee.

In short, we very highly recommend it!

You don't have to just trust us though, because they offer a 30-day free trial

Click here to check out Brilliant, and maybe give it a try!

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

🌎 AROUND THE WEB

What’s happening in the health world…

• Experimental antibody treatment shows promise for preventing bone marrow transplant complication

• Gastric bypass surgery can help people achieve long-term diabetes remission

• Novel method to deliver drugs into inner ear restores hearing in deaf mice

• Posthospitalization meal delivery boosts outcomes for older adults

• Kindness meditation helps people with depression recall positive memories, study finds

More to come tomorrow!

📖 ONE-MINUTE BOOK REVIEW

Skincare: The award-winning ultimate no-nonsense guide and Sunday Times No. 1 best-seller - by Caroline Hirons

Our skin is our largest organ, and it affects (and is affected by) most of what it contains. In other words, us.

So how do we look after this organ? Caroline Hirons lays it bare for us, in this very clear (and well-illustrated with many photos) book that gives a ground-upwards explanation of:

• Our skin's layers and features and what they do

• The many ways our skin can be different from others

• What lifestyle factors to worry about (or not)

• What exactly the many kinds of skincare products do

• How to understand which ones are actually for our skin

• How to craft the ideal skincare routine for any individual

• What should go into a personalized skincare kit

Because, as it turns out, shockingly we can't trust advertising. Not only is it advertising, but also, they don't know us. What will be perfect for one person's skin may ruin another's, and labels can be very misleading.

A strength of this book is how Hirons demystifies all that, so we can ignore the claims and just know what a product will actually do, from its ingredients.

She also covers the changes that occur in various life processes, including puberty, pregnancy, menopause, and just plain aging. In other words, what to do when what's been working suddenly doesn't anymore.

Bottom line: this is a great book for anyone (though: especially those of us with female hormones) who wants to understand the skin you're in and how to keep it well-nourished and glowingly healthy.

Click here to check out "Skincare" and take good care of yourself!

May your smile be bright, may your heart be happy and healthy, and may you find comfort in the skin you’re in,

The 10almonds Team