Newsletter #027: The Health Benefits of Coffee, Sleep, and Montmorency Tart Cherry 🍒
Good day friends!
Happy weekend friends, and welcome to yet another humanOS newsletter! Here, as always, is where we share our own work as well as the various cool studies that grabbed our attention and found their way onto our social media channels. 🤓
This Week’s Research Highlights
☕ Drinking coffee may protect against Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases.
Researchers at the Krembil Research Institute in Toronto analyzed various coffee extracts and specific compounds found in coffee to see how they affect protein fragments associated with neurodegenerative disease. They found that all of the coffee extracts were able to inhibit aggregation of beta-amyloid and tau, which play roles in Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease. However, the dark roast extract was more effective than light. When the researchers zeroed in on specific chemicals, they identified a group of compounds known as phenylindanes, which were the only compounds that could inhibit both of the pathological proteins. Notably, these compounds emerge during the roasting process, which would explain why dark roast seems to have a more powerful impact.
🥱 Short sleep may lead to dehydration.
Researchers analyzed cross-sectional data from representative samples in the United States and China, comprising a total of more than 20,000 people. Participants were surveyed about their sleeping habits and provided urine samples which were analyzed for biomarkers of hydration. Compared to adults who regularly slept for eight or more hours at night, getting six hours of sleep per night was associated with 42-59% higher odds of inadequate hydration. This appears to be due to endocrine regulation of hydration during sleep, particularly through the hormone vasopressin. Lead author Asher Rosinger said in a press release: "Vasopressin is released both more quickly and later on in the sleep cycle. So, if you're waking up earlier, you might miss that window in which more of the hormone is released, causing a disruption in the body's hydration.”
🍒 Montmorency tart cherry protects against age-related bone loss.
Researchers took female mice and divided them into four different diet groups: 0%, 1%, 5%, or 10% tart cherry-supplemented diets. After 90 days (a relatively long time for a mouse lifespan!), the mice that consumed 5% or 10% tart cherry (roughly equivalent to 40-60 g of dried tart cherry for a human) had significantly higher vertebral and tibial bone mineral density, compared to controls, and showed improvements in indices of trabecular and cortical bone microarchitecture. Compounds in tart cherries have antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and prebiotic activity, all of which could counter age-related bone loss.
Podcasts We Loved This Week
- Satchin Panda: How to Use Time-Restricted Eating to Reverse Disease and Optimize Health. Via Nourish Balance Thrive.
- Nina Shapiro: An Insider’s View of Medicine. Via Waking Up with Sam Harris.
Products We Are Enjoying
Bird Mask.
Dan says: As you likely already know, melatonin is secreted by the pineal gland in response to darkness, and sends a circadian signal to help us fall asleep at the right time. Of course, in an ideal world, we would all be going to bed in rooms that are pitch black (or pretty close to it), to facilitate that process. But that’s not always possible. That’s where sleep masks can be really helpful for blocking out ambient light. I like this one in particular because it is made of super soft merino wool.
New humanOS Content and Features
- Blog: Making Intermittent Fasting Easy: Fasting Fridays. By Ginny Robards.
- New Feature: The How-to Guide for Fasting is now available for Pro users!
Media Featuring humanOS
• Dan Pardi: SLEEPING 7-9 HOURS Every Night For One Week. Interview with Sky Life.