Newsletter #113: How to Find Real Avocado Oil, and Exercise for Good Vision
Hello Friends!
Welcome to the Fourth of July edition of the humanOS newsletter! 🧨✨ We hope everyone here in the US enjoys a healthy and safe Independence Day - to the extent that we possibly can in this strange time.
Below, as usual, is our own work, plus a roundup of the various studies and other media that we came across. 🤓 This week, we learned that most avocado oil on store shelves is either rancid or mislabeled (like, not even actually avocado oil); eating a flavonoid-rich diet can modulate your gut bugs in a way that may keep you lean and even boost exercise performance; and physical activity may help keep your eyes healthy and clear.
Check it out. 👇
Cool Deals
- Examine Personalized will be made available next week (Tuesday, July 7). They are offering a sale until Friday, July 10, 11:59 pm EST on Yearly ($75 - a savings of over 25% compared to paying monthly), and Lifetime ($299 - compared to regular price of $399). Hit this link to get in on this and stay on top of the latest health research.
- Sacred Cow, co-authored by Robb Wolf and Diana Rodgers, comes out in just two weeks. When you pre-order today, you’ll get over $200 of some exclusive bonuses, including a free sneak preview of the film Sacred Cow – just click here to get your bonuses.
This Week’s Research Highlights
🥑Most avocado oil sold in the US appears to be either rancid or adulterated.
Researchers purchased avocados and extracted oil in their lab to determine the chemical composition of pure avocado oil, and then analyzed chemical parameters of 22 domestic and imported avocado oil samples from various grocery stores and online retailers. They found that fifteen samples were oxidized before the expiration date. Six samples were heavily adulterated with other cheaper oils - two that were labeled as “pure” avocado oil actually contained 100% soybean oil (no avocado oil at all!). 😱 As someone who regularly uses avocado oil (albeit sparingly), I was not psyched to see this.
So what should we get instead? Brands that were found to actually be pure and fresh by the expiration date included:
- Chosen Foods 100% Pure Avocado Oil
- Marianne’s Avocado Oil (Yep, Costco FTW)
- CalPure Extra-Virgin Avocado Oil
🍓 Polyphenol intake is linked to higher gut microbiota diversity and reduced risk of obesity.
Researchers analyzed data on polyphenol intake, gut microbiome composition, and obesity in a cohort of 1810 female twins and a smaller group of 64 male volunteers. After adjusting for confounders and fiber intake, higher polyphenol intake in these participants was found to correlate with greater microbiome diversity. When they looked at specific classes of polyphenols in the diet, flavonoid intake was associated with abundance of Veillonella, (a genus that has been linked to exercise performance, via its metabolic conversion of lactate into the short-chain fatty acid propionate), and stilbene intake was associated with abundance of butyrate-producing bacteria. Finally, higher consumption of stilbenes and flavonoids was linked to a 20-23% lower prevalence of obesity. Importantly, this finding was independent of fiber intake.
🧠 Greater abdominal fat is linked to a higher risk of dementia.
Researchers studied 6582 participants from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) who were aged ≥50 years and were dementia-free at baseline. BMI and waist circumference were measured. After a follow-up period of up to 15 years, 6.9% of subjects developed dementia. Compared with participants with normal weight, those who were obese at baseline had an elevated risk of dementia incidence. Women with central obesity had a 39% greater risk of dementia compared with non-central obese women, after adjusting for various confounding variables.
👁️ Exercise may help slow or prevent vision loss.
Researchers had mice housed alone in cages that were equipped either with or without running wheels. After 28 days, all mice were exposed to laser photocoagulation to induce choroidal neovascularization (the growth of damaging blood vessels, which is associated with vision loss in macular degeneration and other eye diseases). Mice were then returned to their cages for six days to continue their routines. The exercising rodents exhibited a reduction in harmful overgrowth of blood vessels by up to 45%, compared to sedentary counterparts. Best of all, benefits were evident at a relatively low level of exercise - more wasn’t necessarily better.
Podcasts We Loved This Week
- Stanley Perlman: Insights from a coronavirus expert on COVID-19. Via The Drive with Peter Attia.
- Julian Jagtenberg: Robots, innovation, and the sleep economy. Via Sleep Junkies.
- Mary Caswell Stoddard: Hummingbirds see beyond the rainbow. Via Science Friday.
The humanOS Bookshelf
Atomic Habits by James Clear.
While locked down, I think a lot of us have started to re-evaluate the past patterns of our lives and resolved to try to do things a little differently. But our efforts at this sort of thing are usually pretty short-lived because we fail to develop an effective system to assess our current habits, reinforce good habits, and abolish bad habits. In this book, James draws upon a wide array of evidence from psychology, biology, and cognitive neuroscience to construct a guide to doing just that.
So what do we mean by habits? James defines habits as behaviors that are repeated enough times to be nearly automatic, and not demanding cognitive effort or willpower. Like brushing your teeth, or heading to the gym at 5:00 pm every day, or making a green smoothie every day for breakfast. These automatic processes, which are mostly mundane things that we take for granted, are actually foundational to all of our goals.
The problem, of course, is that we generally don’t see the immediate payoff for any of these behaviors. You don’t drop twenty pounds just switching from regular to diet soda in a single day. You don’t learn how to speak a foreign language just from studying vocabulary for a couple hours. It is only after you’ve committed to these behaviors for a while - after your efforts have compounded, as James puts it - that you start to see the difference. If you wanna learn more, check out our past interview with James Clear (one of my favorites), and definitely give the book a shot if you would like to jump-start those New Year’s resolutions.