I can't remember where (maybe here) that you shouldn't use mouthwash after working out because of the effects on your oral microbiome. That fact shocked me just like this article does because it was unintuitive that your oral microbiome could have such an impact on your physiology.
The effect may actually be a similar one because nitrates do sound familiar...
You shouldn’t use mouthwash at all ever. It’s a nuke to the microbes in your mouth. There was a long, rambling discussion with a functional dentist on the Primal Podcast[0] that goes into this.
> long, rambling discussion with a functional dentist on the Primal Podcast
I don’t know what a “functional dentist” is, but the term “functional medicine” is used to describe alternative medicine doctors. They traditional misinterpret studies and exaggerate their impacts, focusing on small studies in mice or theoretical in vitro studies and then extrapolating those to treatment decisions.
In my own personal experience (chronic pain), "Real Doctors" seem to want to shove pills down your throat because "they work", or give things like steroid shots which have negative long term effects. Whereas "Functional Doctors" are willing to try more traditional things because historically they have seemed to produce good results and are typically less intrusive (but may require more effort from the patient).
So I can see "Functional Dentist" being more like a dentist that is willing to try more ways to save teeth & gums by using more traditional methods (eg. Balancing the oral microbiome, suggesting softer foods more often), rather than a "Real Dentist" suggesting extractions or root canals without ever mentioning the hardness of foods or oral microbiome.
Erythritol and Xylitol do have a strong correlation with severe coronary diseases and risk of strokes under certain preconditions according to newer studies though.
Also not really advisable for people with Irritable Bowel Syndrome.
This is true but how much will your body absorb via a mouthwash?
Erythritol is commonly found in sugar-free or keto-friendly products like beverages, desserts, and snacks. A single serving of an erythritol-sweetened product (e.g., a sugar-free soda, keto ice cream, or protein bar) often contains 10–30 g of erythritol.
Studies, such as the 2023 Nature Medicine study, used a 30 g dose in intervention experiments to simulate typical consumption (e.g., one sweetened beverage or dessert). This dose raised plasma erythritol to 5–7 mM within 30 minutes, a level linked to increased platelet reactivity and clotting risk.
there are mouthwashes that don’t nuke everything in your mouth. Just FYI in case you’re unaware. They are not popular but they exist. The added benefit is it doesn’t burn either lol.
Example: Tom’s of Maine Whole Care Natural Fluoride Mouthwash.
It’s extra beneficial if you live in a state / country that doesn’t add fluoride to drinking water.
There are situations where mouthwashes are beneficial, such as with injuries... Just not the stuff you buy at the store. The best mouthwash for those situations is just warm salty water.
I have an aversion to the alcohol washes after reading years ago that the change to your mouth biome may lead to the issues that they are meant to stop.
fluoride with no kind of antibacterial is fine (careful with thymol etc). Check your toothpaste for anti bacterial as well. you want to remove food and plaque, not good bacteria.
Humming increases NO as well. Maybe you should hum after taking Listerine for a while? I thought one of Listerine's main (unwritten) selling points was that it helps with sex (smell, prophylaxis for STIs).
The physical performance kind. Conversely beet root, L-Citruline, and supplemental NO are commonly used for ED. That’s why medications like tadalafil and sildenafil work. NO relaxes your blood vessels and increases blood flow generally.
Isn't nitrates what makes processed meats so unhealthy? Does this mean the bacon that claims to be cured with celery juice is actually on to something?
No, you're thinking of nitrites. Celery juice is very high in nitrates, which then get converted to nitrites, which they don't have to put on the label. It's entirely marketing. Nothing has materially changed.
The main preservative for processed meats, and the one that reacts with other compounds to form carcinogens, is nitrites not nitrates. Nitrates are sometimes used too, especially for meats that are cured for a long time, because some bacteria will reduce them to nitrites, making them effectively work as a sustained release form of nitrite. See:
Celery root contains nitrites which has been the loophole people are using for cured bacon with “no nitrites” by which they usually say something like no artificial nitrites.
But the article paints this bacterial conversion of nitrates as beneficial. It’s unclear whether the conversion into nitric oxide implies the conversion into nitrites. To me it seems likely the NO benefit may come with nitrosamine production, which may raise colon cancer risk.
I think nitrosamines aren’t exclusively formed in the gut, but are present in cured meat beforehand, though. As far as I know, vitamin C prevents the nitrite to nitrosamine reaction, so fresh nitrate rich vegetable juices may not be inherently harmful through secondary nitrosamine production from converted nitrites. Additionally, their amino acid content is probably low, so as long as they are not consumed with a meal, production may be limited.
Yes, this creates real confusion. Does this mean that you can eat a dozen hotdogs if you wash them down with a glass of beetroot juice?
If you are still not confused read this:
"Although prevalent in the diet, nitrates have been viewed negatively because they chemically form carcinogenic nitrosamines in acidic environments, e.g. stomach, purportedly leading to gastric cancer as well as neoplasia of the intestine, brain, pancreas, and contributing to Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. "
Some time ago I read the book Complete Guide to Sports Nutrition by Anita Bean, which does also emphasize on not using antibacterial mouthwash since it removes the beneficial bacteria in the mouth which convert nitrate to nitrite.
I‘m drinking beetroot juice since 3 years now and asked myself if beetroot capsules might be an alternative.
For people who don't like drinking beetroot juice, you can also regularly (French) kiss with people with healthy oral microbiomes [0][1]. Best to really get in there.
Erythritol and Xylitol do have a strong correlation with severe coronary diseases and risk of strokes under certain preconditions according to newer studies though.
Also not really advisable for people with Irritable Bowel Syndrome.
I think this is also one of the latest "marginal gains" advantages the cycling pro peloton is making use of. After races you can see them all chug a 150-200ml bottle of beetroot juice as a recovery drink while making the afferent faces. :D
beetroot juice was a few years ago and it's for a different purpose - nitric oxide to relax smooth muscle in the airways. the red recovery drink at recent events is tart cherry juice, which is thought to aid in muscle recovery.
I wonder if they could test this by comparing blood pressures of older folks in Australia with those in other countries since I hear they really like beetroot there :)
I'd like to add: Stretching or some other kind of flexibility improving activities. Muscles moving for half an hour a day doesn't (necessarily) do anything for that (may even make it worse if you're doing heavy stuff).
The effects on quality of life of a bit of flexibility are huge. Back pain, knee pain, shoulder pain, "RSI", and so many other ails are often just pretty much permanently cramped muscles negatively affecting ligaments and nerves.
Being flexible is important, but the latest research shows that heavy lifting improves flexibility about as much as a dedicated stretching program: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9935664/
On the phone so can't see study details - what do day consider strength training ? I used to lift heavy (well by regular people standards) and for example my squat mobility was shit. Trying to improve that with significant load would have ripped my tendons I feel. Decreasing the load to the point where it wouldn't might as well be called stretching cause it wouldn't qualify as heavy lifting. Also most powerlifters I know have shit mobility.
Biphasic sleep was probably more common before artificial light, and you really need to be moving every 30-45 minutes. Even just a couple of minutes of walking or doing some chore counts.
> Biphasic sleep was probably more common before artificial light
The last time I looked into this theory it wasn’t nearly as robust as I was led to believe. It got circulated as fact for a few years but the people pushing it didn’t really have as much evidence for it as I assumed.
For those who don't like beets, I eat beet regularly by dropping a few chunks in a fruit smoothie. Makes it nice and pink and the earthy flavor is much diluted.
Back in school I was often told the lead pipes in Roman aqueducts likely played a key role in the fall of Roman. We know lead is a poison with negative long term effects on cognition.
The aqueducts were also responsible for Romes ability to proliferate and grow. Lead was both a blessing and a curse.
I wonder what future generations will say about our highly enriched and processed diets. Calories have never been cheaper and food is ubiquitous. However I believe our food is playing a huge role in our degraded health.
It’s not surprising that most studies looking at the consumption of unprocessed food, fresh fruit and vegetables show benefits to our health.
The challenge is how do we get this food in the hands of those who need it cheaply and without sacrificing the nutritional (and microbial) content.
Also...Roman plumbing was constant-flow. Lead in water is mostly an issue when it gets to rest in the pipes for a while, then when somebody turns the tap on they get water that's had time to absorb the lead. Since Roman plumbing had no taps though and was just running constantly, the amount of time the water was exposed to the lead was pretty minimal.
lead tastes sweet, sugar wasn't cheaply & widely available, honey is expensive etc.
and knowledge about lead poisoning was not really a think AFIK
at the same time lead pipes tend to gain a crust of chalk over time (depending on chalk content of the water) which mostly defuses their danger. Like you will find some very old houses with lead tape water pipes in the EU today but if you test their tape water you won't find (much of) an issue due to 1) the chalk 2) the water not staying long in the pipe if it's e.g. a 4 apartment house.
Joseph R. McConnell et al. (January 6, 2025). Pan-European atmospheric lead pollution, enhanced blood lead levels, and cognitive decline from Roman-era mining and smelting. https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2419630121
High calorie sweeteners have deleterious population-level effects.
Is there any evidence that modern low calorie sweeteners have deleterious population-level effects, and what are they compared to high calorie sweeteners?
Anecdotally I get gut dybiosis (microbiome imbalance) that notably only occurs when using artificial sweeteners and stops when I stop taking it, I’ve talked to many others who have noticed the same thing. Gut dysbiosis can cause chronic systemic inflammation which is rather bad for the body, not sure if it’s worse than the sugar it replaces, but it shouldn’t be assumed that the problem is solved by low calories. I think it’s important to limit both, preferably to near zero.
Sugar alcohols are especially bad for this. I fried my GI one year and it was largely down to developing a gum chewing habit at a time when sugar alcohols were in almost all gum brands. You can’t process them, but bad gut bacteria can.
Lower intelligence would likely surface as hedonistic behavior which is probably hard to distinguish from decadence. Decadence and hedonism were constantly being complained about long before the eventual fall.
> Violence in the US declined as children born around and after leaded gas was banned reached the average age of first offense
My pet hypothesis for the generation born after in the mid postwar era having been a general scourge on America is that we had a population boom amidst lead.
You're going to have to explain your point to me, or perhaps you misunderstood my own.
My point is that while it may have been unclear to the Romans as to the cause of changes in behavior they did notice a change and did complain about it a lot. I accept the premise that lead poisoning leads to lower intelligence.
What we know now is that lead’s effects are more pronounced as developmental issues. A little lead exposure as a child can lead to a violent temper. So once children were not born into a low grade cloud of lead contamination, they were set up for fewer mood disturbances as teenagers and young adults. Feeling like violence is your best avenue for conflict resolution leads to crime. So the change wasn’t over night, it was over 20 years.
I expect that whatever effect was going on in Rome if there was one, which seems to be up for debate, counted on pregnant women exposed to lead via alcohol and acidic foods, neither of which young children would normally encounter. Meanwhile lead dust from exhaust got -everywhere-, and paint a lot of places.
I still think you are agreeing with the implied and later stated accepted premise that there is a correlation and it’s not always obvious, I’m still unsure as to what it is you are trying to add.
So is the idea that widespread lead exposure led to the decline of the Roman empire largely pop science? Are you saying that's not accurate, or that the source of the lead exposure is miscounted?
"Decadence" likely had nothing to do with the Roman Empire's fall. That theory is based essentially on propaganda, designed to absolve them of blame.
The lead pipes had too much calcification, and not much lead would have leached out. But the Romans did use lead acetate as a sweetener, so they were adding lead directly to many (most?) of their meals.
there are many ways to account for the fall of the roman empire, and everyone chooses their favorite (usually depending on where their interest bends). for example, it could be explained by the increased usage of mercenaries in the roman army. i like this theory because the fall was brought by losses to renegade forces. it could also be explained by bad leadership.
Don’t lead pipes or any pipes for water actually get a patina of calcium carbonate or something so while not great it’s not as bad as told. Only if the ph of the water changes because you change the water source, kinda like in flint?
Could you provide some evidence to support your assertion that highly enriched foods are degrading health?
Public health experts contend that enriched foods have improved baseline quality of life. Wheat breads with iron, folate, and B vitamins in the US is an easy example.
> Could you provide some evidence to support your assertion that highly enriched foods are degrading health?
Getting nutrients from whole foods is generally superior, for absorption and balance and avoiding overdosing, than getting it from supplements, whether taken directly or via enrichment.
That said, getting a nutrient any way is better than running a deficiency. For most of agricultural human history, in most societies, most of the population was nutritionally sufficient [1]. That changed with enrichment. It’s healthier to eat whole over enriched food; it’s better to have enriched food versus a vitamin decency.
It’s ahistoric to claim we’re unhealthier today than we’ve been over most of human history. But we can do better. In that way, Roman pipes brought clean water to its populations in a way that made them healthier than people had been in cities to date. But it also gave them lead poisoning, which while better than cholera, is worse than no lead.
> that changed with agriculture some 480 generations ago; enrichment is merely the solution
Whoops, typo—I meant nutritionally deficient.
Hunter-gatherers had a varied but volatile diet. Agriculture solved the volatility at the expense of variety. Most agricultural humans across history were nutritionally deficient.
Enrichment (a/k/a fortification) started to solve for the lack of variety, though it’s been historically stymied by our lack of understanding what e.g. vitamins are; modern farming, biology and logistics enable us to actually solve for the problems agriculture introduced to society for the first time.
Trace those public health experts funding sources...
Hint: it's the farm-bill dependent carb farmers who apparently need our money via farm subsidies and want poor people hooked as they get it from the other end in the form of SNAP.
Not sure where you get completely false. Like most urban legends it's a little truth and a lot of falsehoods. Lead pipes are a known health hazard. Lead pipes didn't lead to the fall of the Roman Empire.
"Back in school I was often told the lead pipes in Roman aqueducts likely played a key role in the fall of Roman. We know lead is a poison with negative long term effects on cognition."
I highly doubt there was much effect from the pipes. They would quickly be sealed in mineral scale. Cups or utensils - maybe, but would be more about specific important people using them rather than being widespread.
Pre enlightenment Europe also saw cheap wine being sweetened with a lump of lead suspended in wine barrels.
Around the World in Six Glasses will tell you that tea replacing wine lead to Progress in Europe because they weren’t drunk all day but I wonder how much was inebriation and how much was lead exposure.
Smells like a little of column A, a little of column B.
Beer was also widely prevalent, right? Even if it's just small beer (<3%ABV), it's not exactly making you smarter. It's hard to hit the Ballmer peak, after all
Beer was their water treatment plan. You drank watered down alcohol as a way to avoid waterborne illnesses. Tea is boiling water which we still use to this day to deal with the water supply being contaminated.
Apparently it wasn't the pipes, which wouldn't have leached enough to make a difference. It was the fact that the Romans used lead acetate as a sweetener in their food and drinks!
It should be noted that juice is a highly-processed food. It concentrates the sugar, vitamin, mineral, and water content of a plant while removing the fiber.
As to your last question, part of it may be rethinking the profit motive in food production. Food waste to keep prices high is a huge issue.
Well no if it changed it then you wouldn't need to keep drinking it for the same effect
It's the nitrates which have a short half-life
And the thing is high quality Beet juice is very expensive because it has to be grown in good soil with lots of nitrates, most of the stuff coming out of China is poor quality with just the name and people don't know any better
I started consuming Beet Chews recently. I'm not convinced of it though.
I think it's just one of those things where I see a YouTube video and go to Amazon to add a new supplement to my life. Then once the supply of the supplement is up I choose not to re-up on it. That's what I'm planning for the Beet Chews too.
I wonder really how much it really lowers BP and what quantity to consume?
The linked article doesn't specify how much was consumed? A single cup? A liter? Likewise I'm just consuming 2 Beet Chews per day per the suggested serving size. But who knows if that really is the "minimum effective dose". There is value to the placebo effect of course, I'm taking something in order to convince myself I'm healthier.
Calorie for calorie beetroot juice has the same sugar content as beets. I am certain you are not asserting that beets are not something that humans would normally digest.
Beetroot juice is legal “doping”.
Of course nothing illegal, only natural, a disadvantage if you don’t utilize it for you.
There are beetroot parties at almost any Triathlon event for the runners, apnea divers also get a huge natural and healthy boost.
I use it for long runs I don’t really feel the difference every time, but stats and data speak their own language.
Give it a try, timing is a bit tricky depending on your feast.
But caution: don’t overdo it due to oxalate as potential risk.
And mustn’t be the juice, the beetroot itself already does the job.
Should be a raw juice or polish beetroot soup (barszcz) does the job?
Do we know the mechanism by which this works? Is it just anecdotal, or is this studied at a population/statistical level?
I can't remember where (maybe here) that you shouldn't use mouthwash after working out because of the effects on your oral microbiome. That fact shocked me just like this article does because it was unintuitive that your oral microbiome could have such an impact on your physiology.
The effect may actually be a similar one because nitrates do sound familiar...
You shouldn’t use mouthwash at all ever. It’s a nuke to the microbes in your mouth. There was a long, rambling discussion with a functional dentist on the Primal Podcast[0] that goes into this.
[0] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jNrm-9sp-RQ
> long, rambling discussion with a functional dentist on the Primal Podcast
I don’t know what a “functional dentist” is, but the term “functional medicine” is used to describe alternative medicine doctors. They traditional misinterpret studies and exaggerate their impacts, focusing on small studies in mice or theoretical in vitro studies and then extrapolating those to treatment decisions.
In my own personal experience (chronic pain), "Real Doctors" seem to want to shove pills down your throat because "they work", or give things like steroid shots which have negative long term effects. Whereas "Functional Doctors" are willing to try more traditional things because historically they have seemed to produce good results and are typically less intrusive (but may require more effort from the patient).
So I can see "Functional Dentist" being more like a dentist that is willing to try more ways to save teeth & gums by using more traditional methods (eg. Balancing the oral microbiome, suggesting softer foods more often), rather than a "Real Dentist" suggesting extractions or root canals without ever mentioning the hardness of foods or oral microbiome.
You should definitely use mouthwash. For healthier teeth and problems like Alzheimer might also be correlated:
https://expatcircle.com/cms/how-to-clean-your-teeth-and-save...
Erythritol and Xylitol do have a strong correlation with severe coronary diseases and risk of strokes under certain preconditions according to newer studies though.
Also not really advisable for people with Irritable Bowel Syndrome.
This is true but how much will your body absorb via a mouthwash?
Erythritol is commonly found in sugar-free or keto-friendly products like beverages, desserts, and snacks. A single serving of an erythritol-sweetened product (e.g., a sugar-free soda, keto ice cream, or protein bar) often contains 10–30 g of erythritol.
Studies, such as the 2023 Nature Medicine study, used a 30 g dose in intervention experiments to simulate typical consumption (e.g., one sweetened beverage or dessert). This dose raised plasma erythritol to 5–7 mM within 30 minutes, a level linked to increased platelet reactivity and clotting risk.
Why the downvote? The evidence is strong. I rinse daily with sugar alcohols.
there are mouthwashes that don’t nuke everything in your mouth. Just FYI in case you’re unaware. They are not popular but they exist. The added benefit is it doesn’t burn either lol.
Example: Tom’s of Maine Whole Care Natural Fluoride Mouthwash.
It’s extra beneficial if you live in a state / country that doesn’t add fluoride to drinking water.
There are situations where mouthwashes are beneficial, such as with injuries... Just not the stuff you buy at the store. The best mouthwash for those situations is just warm salty water.
I'll just add that chlorohexadine mouthwash is probably the most vile thing I've ever put in my mouth; like gargling essence of hospital.
Being that guy: Chlorhexidine is the correct spelling. It is what Nate the hoof guy uses when cleaning cow hoof wounds.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=nate+the+hoof+g...
Alcohol or just fluoride?
I have an aversion to the alcohol washes after reading years ago that the change to your mouth biome may lead to the issues that they are meant to stop.
fluoride with no kind of antibacterial is fine (careful with thymol etc). Check your toothpaste for anti bacterial as well. you want to remove food and plaque, not good bacteria.
But fluoride IS antibacterial.
If you have trouble in bed, ask yourself if you use Listerine. It kills your mouth’s microbiome and lowers your Nitric Oxide production [0].
[0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31709856/
Humming increases NO as well. Maybe you should hum after taking Listerine for a while? I thought one of Listerine's main (unwritten) selling points was that it helps with sex (smell, prophylaxis for STIs).
I don't use Listerine but I didn't get this: trouble in bed of what kind? I couldn't get it from the linked article.
I never knew high blood pressure correlates with bad sleep or bad sex (if anything, meds for high blood pressure come with negative effects on that).
The physical performance kind. Conversely beet root, L-Citruline, and supplemental NO are commonly used for ED. That’s why medications like tadalafil and sildenafil work. NO relaxes your blood vessels and increases blood flow generally.
> I never knew high blood pressure correlates with bad sleep or bad sex.
I don't know about bad sleep, but definitely bad sex. ED is an early indicator of hypertension.
From personal experience, yes, it does. My blood pressure comes down only when I sleep in a very quiet room with no light.
Nitric oxide relaxes your blood cells, letting blood flow easier into parts that erect themselves with blood.
Try taking arginine for a week if you want to experience the effect first hand.
And get sun exposure since your body will synthesize it.
Does sun exposure increase nitric oxide?
Yes
Is there a material difference between drinking beetroot juice and just eating a mess of beets?
The dosage of this study was "2 × 70 ml ∙d−1, each containing ∼595 mg NO3−". That's probably gonna be tough to get daily by eating beets...
Isn't nitrates what makes processed meats so unhealthy? Does this mean the bacon that claims to be cured with celery juice is actually on to something?
No, you're thinking of nitrites. Celery juice is very high in nitrates, which then get converted to nitrites, which they don't have to put on the label. It's entirely marketing. Nothing has materially changed.
The main preservative for processed meats, and the one that reacts with other compounds to form carcinogens, is nitrites not nitrates. Nitrates are sometimes used too, especially for meats that are cured for a long time, because some bacteria will reduce them to nitrites, making them effectively work as a sustained release form of nitrite. See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curing_salt
Celery root contains nitrites which has been the loophole people are using for cured bacon with “no nitrites” by which they usually say something like no artificial nitrites.
But the article paints this bacterial conversion of nitrates as beneficial. It’s unclear whether the conversion into nitric oxide implies the conversion into nitrites. To me it seems likely the NO benefit may come with nitrosamine production, which may raise colon cancer risk.
I think nitrosamines aren’t exclusively formed in the gut, but are present in cured meat beforehand, though. As far as I know, vitamin C prevents the nitrite to nitrosamine reaction, so fresh nitrate rich vegetable juices may not be inherently harmful through secondary nitrosamine production from converted nitrites. Additionally, their amino acid content is probably low, so as long as they are not consumed with a meal, production may be limited.
Celery is just a "natural" source of nitrates/nitrates. This makes it legal somehow to lie and claim "no added nitrates" on the label.
I can't believe the tiktok health cult hasn't caught on to this yet.
Seed oils are the devil but "uncured" meats? All good!
Yes, this creates real confusion. Does this mean that you can eat a dozen hotdogs if you wash them down with a glass of beetroot juice?
If you are still not confused read this:
"Although prevalent in the diet, nitrates have been viewed negatively because they chemically form carcinogenic nitrosamines in acidic environments, e.g. stomach, purportedly leading to gastric cancer as well as neoplasia of the intestine, brain, pancreas, and contributing to Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. "
https://www.memphis.edu/healthsciences/pdfs/martin-asnh.pdf
Some time ago I read the book Complete Guide to Sports Nutrition by Anita Bean, which does also emphasize on not using antibacterial mouthwash since it removes the beneficial bacteria in the mouth which convert nitrate to nitrite.
I‘m drinking beetroot juice since 3 years now and asked myself if beetroot capsules might be an alternative.
For people who don't like drinking beetroot juice, you can also regularly (French) kiss with people with healthy oral microbiomes [0][1]. Best to really get in there.
[0] https://www.adelaide.edu.au/newsroom/news/list/2024/02/20/mo...
[1] https://microbiomejournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186...
Ok but what happens when unhealthy kisses healthy? Does it balance out?
If it's not risky, I'm about to embark on a mission.
> Ok but what happens when unhealthy kisses healthy? Does it balance out?
If you're lucky, sparks fly ;-)
> If it's not risky, I'm about to embark on a mission.
"Hey baby, can I sample your oral microbiome?"
We need a dating app with this filter
How would capsules affect the mouth biome, though?
Not sure, probably it doesn’t - in this regard the capsules might just be snake oil if they are not good in any other way
You could also make Borscht with good quality beef for a balanced, healthy meal. It's the best.
I recommend using a mouthwash based on xylitol which kills strains like streptococcus mutans but does not impair these nitrate reducers.
Erythritol and Xylitol do have a strong correlation with severe coronary diseases and risk of strokes under certain preconditions according to newer studies though.
Also not really advisable for people with Irritable Bowel Syndrome.
Have you considered L-Citrulline as an alternative to Beet Root? There is a great YouTube video on DAOC with Dr Bryant. You might enjoy it.
https://youtu.be/zECoaEZRRFU?si=IRpX9Tn6tYOH_LTs
I think this is also one of the latest "marginal gains" advantages the cycling pro peloton is making use of. After races you can see them all chug a 150-200ml bottle of beetroot juice as a recovery drink while making the afferent faces. :D
beetroot juice was a few years ago and it's for a different purpose - nitric oxide to relax smooth muscle in the airways. the red recovery drink at recent events is tart cherry juice, which is thought to aid in muscle recovery.
That's interesting. I had always assumed that the effect was due to vasodilation but perhaps not.
It is. The article is about how the beet juice affects the microbiome in a way that increases the conversion of nitrate to vasodialating nitric oxide.
I wonder if they could test this by comparing blood pressures of older folks in Australia with those in other countries since I hear they really like beetroot there :)
Comfortable and uninterrupted sleeping, eating mostly plants, and getting your heart rate up and muscles moving for half an hour per day.
Anything else is going from 90% healthy to 99%.
I'd like to add: Stretching or some other kind of flexibility improving activities. Muscles moving for half an hour a day doesn't (necessarily) do anything for that (may even make it worse if you're doing heavy stuff).
The effects on quality of life of a bit of flexibility are huge. Back pain, knee pain, shoulder pain, "RSI", and so many other ails are often just pretty much permanently cramped muscles negatively affecting ligaments and nerves.
Being flexible is important, but the latest research shows that heavy lifting improves flexibility about as much as a dedicated stretching program: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9935664/
On the phone so can't see study details - what do day consider strength training ? I used to lift heavy (well by regular people standards) and for example my squat mobility was shit. Trying to improve that with significant load would have ripped my tendons I feel. Decreasing the load to the point where it wouldn't might as well be called stretching cause it wouldn't qualify as heavy lifting. Also most powerlifters I know have shit mobility.
For the movements that you happen to make with the barbell.
This + avoiding cigarettes, alcohol and any other drug as much as possible.
Does caffeine consumption out watching horror films (to greet your heart rate up higher than normal) count, or does it have to be strenuous cardio?
Biphasic sleep was probably more common before artificial light, and you really need to be moving every 30-45 minutes. Even just a couple of minutes of walking or doing some chore counts.
> Biphasic sleep was probably more common before artificial light
The last time I looked into this theory it wasn’t nearly as robust as I was led to believe. It got circulated as fact for a few years but the people pushing it didn’t really have as much evidence for it as I assumed.
For those who don't like beets, I eat beet regularly by dropping a few chunks in a fruit smoothie. Makes it nice and pink and the earthy flavor is much diluted.
I don't like beets but borscht is amazing.
Wouldn't this stain teeth over time?
Not as much as tea, coffee and tobacco
Back in school I was often told the lead pipes in Roman aqueducts likely played a key role in the fall of Roman. We know lead is a poison with negative long term effects on cognition.
The aqueducts were also responsible for Romes ability to proliferate and grow. Lead was both a blessing and a curse.
I wonder what future generations will say about our highly enriched and processed diets. Calories have never been cheaper and food is ubiquitous. However I believe our food is playing a huge role in our degraded health.
It’s not surprising that most studies looking at the consumption of unprocessed food, fresh fruit and vegetables show benefits to our health.
The challenge is how do we get this food in the hands of those who need it cheaply and without sacrificing the nutritional (and microbial) content.
The lead pipes theory is mostly just pop-science. Romans were likely getting more lead exposure from using lead cooking vessels and utensils.
Not to mention the fact that their pipes immediately become mineralized, and very little lead leeches in cold water.
Headline science has a way of sticking around for a long time.
Also...Roman plumbing was constant-flow. Lead in water is mostly an issue when it gets to rest in the pipes for a while, then when somebody turns the tap on they get water that's had time to absorb the lead. Since Roman plumbing had no taps though and was just running constantly, the amount of time the water was exposed to the lead was pretty minimal.
spelling pedant: "leaches," not "leeches"
It’s lychees
also lead flavoring
lead tastes sweet, sugar wasn't cheaply & widely available, honey is expensive etc.
and knowledge about lead poisoning was not really a think AFIK
at the same time lead pipes tend to gain a crust of chalk over time (depending on chalk content of the water) which mostly defuses their danger. Like you will find some very old houses with lead tape water pipes in the EU today but if you test their tape water you won't find (much of) an issue due to 1) the chalk 2) the water not staying long in the pipe if it's e.g. a 4 apartment house.
Here's Vitruvius in "De Architectura" claiming it's common, easily verified knowledge: https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Vitruvius...
Of course, him mentioning "Don't do this" suggests that lead water pipes into the home were common enough to need a warning against.
interesting
> "Don't do this" suggests that lead water pipes into the home were common enough to need a warning against.
sadly, they still are today sometimes, in areas with a lot of 125+year old infrastructure :/
Joseph R. McConnell et al. (January 6, 2025). Pan-European atmospheric lead pollution, enhanced blood lead levels, and cognitive decline from Roman-era mining and smelting. https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2419630121
Plus literally “flavoring” their wine on purpose with lead acetate.
And that was the first and last time that no-calorie sweeteners had deleterious population-level effects
High calorie sweeteners have deleterious population-level effects.
Is there any evidence that modern low calorie sweeteners have deleterious population-level effects, and what are they compared to high calorie sweeteners?
Anecdotally I get gut dybiosis (microbiome imbalance) that notably only occurs when using artificial sweeteners and stops when I stop taking it, I’ve talked to many others who have noticed the same thing. Gut dysbiosis can cause chronic systemic inflammation which is rather bad for the body, not sure if it’s worse than the sugar it replaces, but it shouldn’t be assumed that the problem is solved by low calories. I think it’s important to limit both, preferably to near zero.
Sugar alcohols are especially bad for this. I fried my GI one year and it was largely down to developing a gum chewing habit at a time when sugar alcohols were in almost all gum brands. You can’t process them, but bad gut bacteria can.
It sucks so much, because xylitol appears to be very good for your teeth but bad for your heart:
https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/xylitol...
I wonder if any Romans evidence had any evidence of population-level delirium from lead consumption...
Lower intelligence would likely surface as hedonistic behavior which is probably hard to distinguish from decadence. Decadence and hedonism were constantly being complained about long before the eventual fall.
Violence in the US declined as children born around and after leaded gas was banned reached the average age of first offense. It’s quite a line.
> Violence in the US declined as children born around and after leaded gas was banned reached the average age of first offense
My pet hypothesis for the generation born after in the mid postwar era having been a general scourge on America is that we had a population boom amidst lead.
You're going to have to explain your point to me, or perhaps you misunderstood my own.
My point is that while it may have been unclear to the Romans as to the cause of changes in behavior they did notice a change and did complain about it a lot. I accept the premise that lead poisoning leads to lower intelligence.
What we know now is that lead’s effects are more pronounced as developmental issues. A little lead exposure as a child can lead to a violent temper. So once children were not born into a low grade cloud of lead contamination, they were set up for fewer mood disturbances as teenagers and young adults. Feeling like violence is your best avenue for conflict resolution leads to crime. So the change wasn’t over night, it was over 20 years.
I expect that whatever effect was going on in Rome if there was one, which seems to be up for debate, counted on pregnant women exposed to lead via alcohol and acidic foods, neither of which young children would normally encounter. Meanwhile lead dust from exhaust got -everywhere-, and paint a lot of places.
I still think you are agreeing with the implied and later stated accepted premise that there is a correlation and it’s not always obvious, I’m still unsure as to what it is you are trying to add.
> Lower intelligence would likely surface as hedonistic behavior why do you think so
poor decision making
Interestingly, in 2017, a research found that crime rates in US dropped as lead pipes are replaced with better alternatives [0].
[0]: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/new-evidence-that-lead-ex...
Which continued pretty much into the modern age. Nothing specifically Roman about it.
So is the idea that widespread lead exposure led to the decline of the Roman empire largely pop science? Are you saying that's not accurate, or that the source of the lead exposure is miscounted?
Yes, that is the modern understanding. Widespread lead exposure had very little / nothing to do with the decline the Roman Empire.
Plus to prove the lead connection you have to discount the centuries of Roman dominance and growth during which lead exposure was common.
This is a much better point. It's not like there were more lead pipes during the decline than the rise.
"Decadence" likely had nothing to do with the Roman Empire's fall. That theory is based essentially on propaganda, designed to absolve them of blame.
The lead pipes had too much calcification, and not much lead would have leached out. But the Romans did use lead acetate as a sweetener, so they were adding lead directly to many (most?) of their meals.
there are many ways to account for the fall of the roman empire, and everyone chooses their favorite (usually depending on where their interest bends). for example, it could be explained by the increased usage of mercenaries in the roman army. i like this theory because the fall was brought by losses to renegade forces. it could also be explained by bad leadership.
Don’t lead pipes or any pipes for water actually get a patina of calcium carbonate or something so while not great it’s not as bad as told. Only if the ph of the water changes because you change the water source, kinda like in flint?
Yes. There's nothing wrong with lead pipes.
Could you provide some evidence to support your assertion that highly enriched foods are degrading health?
Public health experts contend that enriched foods have improved baseline quality of life. Wheat breads with iron, folate, and B vitamins in the US is an easy example.
> Could you provide some evidence to support your assertion that highly enriched foods are degrading health?
Getting nutrients from whole foods is generally superior, for absorption and balance and avoiding overdosing, than getting it from supplements, whether taken directly or via enrichment.
That said, getting a nutrient any way is better than running a deficiency. For most of agricultural human history, in most societies, most of the population was nutritionally sufficient [1]. That changed with enrichment. It’s healthier to eat whole over enriched food; it’s better to have enriched food versus a vitamin decency.
It’s ahistoric to claim we’re unhealthier today than we’ve been over most of human history. But we can do better. In that way, Roman pipes brought clean water to its populations in a way that made them healthier than people had been in cities to date. But it also gave them lead poisoning, which while better than cholera, is worse than no lead.
[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9460423/
> That changed with enrichment.
You’re close. According to the paper, that changed with agriculture some 480 generations ago; enrichment is merely the solution.
> that changed with agriculture some 480 generations ago; enrichment is merely the solution
Whoops, typo—I meant nutritionally deficient.
Hunter-gatherers had a varied but volatile diet. Agriculture solved the volatility at the expense of variety. Most agricultural humans across history were nutritionally deficient.
Enrichment (a/k/a fortification) started to solve for the lack of variety, though it’s been historically stymied by our lack of understanding what e.g. vitamins are; modern farming, biology and logistics enable us to actually solve for the problems agriculture introduced to society for the first time.
Trace those public health experts funding sources...
Hint: it's the farm-bill dependent carb farmers who apparently need our money via farm subsidies and want poor people hooked as they get it from the other end in the form of SNAP.
No; this is a deliberately misleading non-sequitur with decades of evidence to refute.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10609867
The lead pipe thing is one of the best known urban legends that's both completely false and also constantly making rounds on the internet.
Not sure where you get completely false. Like most urban legends it's a little truth and a lot of falsehoods. Lead pipes are a known health hazard. Lead pipes didn't lead to the fall of the Roman Empire.
It's completely false as in lead pipes didn't have anything to do with the fall of the Roman Empire as originally mentioned in the top comment.
"Back in school I was often told the lead pipes in Roman aqueducts likely played a key role in the fall of Roman. We know lead is a poison with negative long term effects on cognition."
I highly doubt there was much effect from the pipes. They would quickly be sealed in mineral scale. Cups or utensils - maybe, but would be more about specific important people using them rather than being widespread.
Wine (and grape juice) was cooked in lead vessels, which generates Lead(II) Acetate aka Sugar of Lead. They lead poisoned themselves coming and going.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead(II)_acetate
Pre enlightenment Europe also saw cheap wine being sweetened with a lump of lead suspended in wine barrels.
Around the World in Six Glasses will tell you that tea replacing wine lead to Progress in Europe because they weren’t drunk all day but I wonder how much was inebriation and how much was lead exposure.
Smells like a little of column A, a little of column B.
Beer was also widely prevalent, right? Even if it's just small beer (<3%ABV), it's not exactly making you smarter. It's hard to hit the Ballmer peak, after all
Beer was their water treatment plan. You drank watered down alcohol as a way to avoid waterborne illnesses. Tea is boiling water which we still use to this day to deal with the water supply being contaminated.
Apparently it wasn't the pipes, which wouldn't have leached enough to make a difference. It was the fact that the Romans used lead acetate as a sweetener in their food and drinks!
It should be noted that juice is a highly-processed food. It concentrates the sugar, vitamin, mineral, and water content of a plant while removing the fiber.
As to your last question, part of it may be rethinking the profit motive in food production. Food waste to keep prices high is a huge issue.
Well no if it changed it then you wouldn't need to keep drinking it for the same effect
It's the nitrates which have a short half-life
And the thing is high quality Beet juice is very expensive because it has to be grown in good soil with lots of nitrates, most of the stuff coming out of China is poor quality with just the name and people don't know any better
Cooked or raw?
I started consuming Beet Chews recently. I'm not convinced of it though.
I think it's just one of those things where I see a YouTube video and go to Amazon to add a new supplement to my life. Then once the supply of the supplement is up I choose not to re-up on it. That's what I'm planning for the Beet Chews too.
I wonder really how much it really lowers BP and what quantity to consume?
The linked article doesn't specify how much was consumed? A single cup? A liter? Likewise I'm just consuming 2 Beet Chews per day per the suggested serving size. But who knows if that really is the "minimum effective dose". There is value to the placebo effect of course, I'm taking something in order to convince myself I'm healthier.
One of the problems with beetroot though is that it is loaded with sugar.
Well, you don’t need to guzzle 600 calories of it.
So? Every living human needs a lot of calories every day.
If you do not differentiate between sugar and calories you clearly can learn a lot about the human digestion and microbiomes.
Complex (slow) carbs [does it feed your microbiome predominantly] != easy (fast) carbs [does it quickly go into your bloodstream and cells]
Calorie for calorie beetroot juice has the same sugar content as beets. I am certain you are not asserting that beets are not something that humans would normally digest.
Thousands, even.