Newsletter #81: Red Light Therapy and Cauliflower Crackers 🦃
Hello Friends!
Welcome to the Thanksgiving edition of the humanOS newsletter! 🤓 We of course wish everyone a happy and healthy holiday week. Here, as always, is where we share our work, plus the various studies and media that caught our attention this week.
This Week’s Research Highlights
💪🏽 Muscle mass in midlife is linked to future risk of heart disease.
Researchers followed 2020 participants in a prospective population-based study, 1019 of whom were at least 45 years old. They captured cardiovascular disease incidence and mortality over the course of ten years, and measured skeletal muscle mass in subjects. After ten years, baseline skeletal muscle mass showed a significant inverse association with cardiovascular disease incidence, even after adjusting for confounders. Individuals in the highest tertile of skeletal muscle mass had 81% lower risk for a cardiovascular event, compared to those in the lowest tertile.
😴 A modest increase in sleep can boost health and performance in young adults.
Researchers instructed healthy undergraduate students to maintain a habitual sleep schedule in the first week of the study, and then to increase their sleep duration by at least one hour per night for the second week. Subjects managed to prolong sleep by 43 minutes, on average. After sleep extension, subjects reported less daytime sleepiness (not exactly shocking) as well as an impressive 7.0 mmHg reduction in blood pressure.
🚂 Nocturnal noise can disrupt sleep and elevate risk of cardiovascular disease.
Seventy healthy subjects were exposed to either normal background (control) or to two different types of simulated train noise. After each night, participants visited the study center for measurement of vascular function and assessment of other biomedical and biochemical parameters. When participants slept with the train noise in the background, they experienced poorer sleep quality, and they showed impaired endothelial function (measured by flow-mediated dilation of the brachial artery). Targeted proteomic analysis showed substantial changes of plasma proteins, mainly centered on redox, pro-thrombotic and pro-inflammatory pathways.
New humanOS Features
- Course Enhancement: We have added Talking Points to the fourth course in the Fasting Program. 🙌
FYI: Talking Points is a feature that is unlocked once you complete a course (just click on the achievement badge), and offers a useful recap of key takeaways from the lessons to aid memory retention and enhance your ability to convey the information to the world around you.
New humanOS Content
🔬 This week on humanOS Radio, Dan interviewed Michael Hamblin. Dr. Hamblin was (recently retired) Principal Investigator at the Wellman Center for Photomedicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, and an Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School.
🌞 There is perhaps no one alive with greater expertise in the health effects of red light therapy and near infrared light than Dr. Hamblin. He is a prolific researcher in photomedicine, having published over 400 peer-reviewed articles on the subject, as well as authored and edited 23 different textbooks.
🎧 In this interview, Dr. Hamblin explains:
- What photobiomodulation is, and the molecular mechanisms through which it works its magic
- What wavelengths and intensities of light are used for physiological effects
- How photobiomodulation has been investigated for athletic performance, skin health and rejuvenation, and psychological conditions
- When and how to use red light therapy for exercise performance and recovery
- How red light functions as a healthy stressor to elicit anti-aging effects
- And more!
Videos We Loved This Week
- Samantha Jones: The Secret to Roasting Amazing Potatoes According to Chemistry. Via Reactions (American Chemical Society).
- Brian Hare: Survival of the Friendliest. Via Duke Gives.
- Kevin Hall: Ultra-Processed Foods. Via ILSI Global.
Products We Are Enjoying
Real Food From the Ground Up Cauliflower Crackers
Cauliflower seems to be incorporated into everything nowadays, with varying degrees of success. These, however, are one of the better examples of that phenomenon. They have 100 calories for about 40 (itty bitty) crackers, which is decent. And the main ingredient is cauliflower powder, so they are actually pretty nutritious for a cracker. If you’re looking for something crunchy and healthy-ish to munch on while watching football during the holiday, or to put on top of some soup, I think this definitely fits the bill. These crackers do have a distinct cauliflower taste, so be ready for that.
