Newsletter #66: Why Entrepreneurs Especially Need Good Sleep 🤔
Hello Friends!
Welcome to the newest edition of the humanOS newsletter! Here, as always, is where we share our work, plus the various studies and media that captured our attention this week. 🤓
This Week’s Research Highlights
🧠 Holocaust survivors may have suffered permanent harmful changes to their brain structure - and the brains of their descendants may also be affected.
Researchers examined MRI scans of 28 Holocaust survivors, and compared them to those of 28 matched individuals in the same age group without a personal or familial connection to the Holocaust. Survivors showed significantly decreased volume of gray matter in the brain, generally in regions associated with stress response, memory, motivation, emotion, learning and behavior. Early results suggest that survivors' children and grandchildren also exhibit differences in brain structure and connectivity.
🍒🥤 Tart cherry juice may help improve cognitive performance in older adults.
Thirty-four older adults were randomly assigned to consume either 16 ounces of Montmorency tart cherry juice or the same volume of a placebo beverage every day. After 12 weeks, those drinking Montmorency tart cherry juice exhibited improved scores in both cognitive function and subjective memory. The tart cherry group showed a 4% reduction in movement time (a measurement of speed of response to visual stimuli) and a 23% reduction in errors made during an episodic visual memory task (which assesses visual memory and new learning) compared to placebo. They also exhibited a 3% improvement in visual sustained attention (which measures visual information processing) and an 18% reduction in errors made during a spatial working memory task (which assesses memory and strategy use) compared to baseline values.
🍽️ Alternate day fasting may offer unique metabolic benefits, compared to daily caloric restriction.
Insulin-resistant adults participated in a 12-month study comparing alternate day fasting (25% energy needs on “fast days”; 125% energy needs on alternating “feast days”) with caloric restriction (75% energy needs every day). Weight loss was not statistically different between the two groups, and fat mass decreased similarly between the groups. However, subjects in the alternate day fasting group experienced greater reductions in fasting insulin (−52% ± 9% versus −14% ± 9%) and in insulin resistance (−53% ± 9% versus −17% ± 11%), despite the similar decrease in body mass.
😴 Sleep is crucial for coming up with and assessing viable business ideas.
Researchers surveyed 784 entrepreneurs from all over the globe, inquiring about sleep patterns and duration. Subjects were asked to review business pitches that had previously been evaluated and rated by an independent panel of experts. Participants who had less sleep were less likely to consistently select the pitches deemed most likely to be successful. In the second part of the study, the researchers recruited 101 small business entrepreneurs, who evaluated business pitches over the course of two weeks while recording their sleep patterns. On days when subjects got less sleep than was typical for them, they tended to perform worse - in particular, being less able to identify less-obvious opportunity ideas, and more likely to be receptive to questionable ideas. Sleep loss has subtle but real effects on cognitive performance, which may be especially detrimental to entrepreneurs who shortchange sleep to work longer and harder.
New humanOS Feature
- humanOS Radio is now on Spotify!
Podcasts We Loved This Week
- Matthew Walker: Strategies for sleeping more, sleeping better, and avoiding things that are disrupting sleep. Via The Drive with Peter Attia.
- Alexandra Johnstone: Appetite control, satiety, and diet interventions. Via Sigma Nutrition Radio.
Products We Are Enjoying
Chamomile tea ☕
Ginny says: I drink this tea every night, mostly because it smells really good and is vaguely relaxing. But as an added bonus, some preliminary research does suggest that it may be health promoting. Chamomile is one of the richest sources of apigenin amongst edible plants, and a number of studies have suggested that apigenin has mild anxiolytic and antidepressant effects in animal models, perhaps by binding to GABA-A receptors (obviously a good thing for when you’re about to go to sleep). And the long term effects on health may be even more compelling - flavones like apigenin appear to be anti-inflammatory and anti-carcinogenic. This may be why women who drank chamomile tea regularly showed a 29% reduced risk of all-cause mortality compared to non-users, even after adjusting for health behaviors and other confounders.