Newsletter #111: Sleep Fragmentation, Food Processing, and Emancipation
Hello Friends!
Welcome to the Juneteenth edition of the humanOS newsletter!
155 years ago, Major General Gordon Granger informed citizens in the extreme western edge of the former Confederacy that slavery had been abolished - meaning that the last enslaved African-Americans finally learned of their freedom. This is, of course, a fitting time not only for all Americans to celebrate but also for us to reflect upon our past and our future as a nation.
Below, as usual, is our own work, plus a roundup of the various studies and media that we came across this week. 👇
This Week’s Research Highlights
😴 Sleep fragmentation is associated with increased risk of coronary artery disease.
Researchers analyzed diagnostic data from more than 1600 middle-aged and older adults from the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis. They looked at several different measures of sleep, including polysomnography and wrist-based actigraphy, to determine sleep characteristics, as well as white blood cell count and in vivo measures of subclinical atherosclerosis. The analysis revealed, sure enough, that disrupted sleep patterns predicted higher Coronary Artery Calcification scores. This may be because sleep fragmentation also was linked to higher concentrations of circulating inflammatory factors (monocytes and neutrophils), which are known to play a key role in the pathogenesis of heart disease.
🥖 The benefits of whole grains may be compromised when the foods are heavily processed.
Thirty-one adults with type 2 diabetes were randomly assigned to two interventions, each of a 2-week duration, separated by a washout. They were asked to replace the grain foods that they normally consumed with intervention foods, which were nutrient-matched whole-grain products of wheat, oats, and brown rice that differed only in their degree of processing. Postprandial responses were 9% lower following breakfast and 6% lower following all meals of less-processed whole grains when compared with finely milled grains. Furthermore, subjects showed reduced variability of blood glucose levels throughout the day when eating less processed meals. Finally, they lost a small amount of weight when consuming the intact grains, but gained weight when eating the finely milled grains.
🍩 Higher ultra-processed food intake is associated with higher DNA damage in healthy adolescents.
Researchers analyzed ultra-processed food intake and its association with urinary levels of 8-hydroxy-2'-deoxyguanosine (8-OHdG), a biomarker of DNA oxidative damage, in 139 healthy adolescents in Iran. Usual dietary intake was measured using a 168-item validated food frequency questionnaire. Adolescents in the higher tertile of ultra-processed food consumption had a significantly higher mean level of urinary 8-OHdG/ creatinine in comparison to the lower tertiles. This link remained after adjustment for confounding variables, including total energy intake, sex, age, body mass index, obesity, and physical activity.
Podcasts We Loved This Week
- Austin Baraki: Potential harms of screening, overdiagnosis, and overtreatment. Via Sigma Nutrition.
- Cathy Goldstein: AI, wearables, and the future of sleep medicine. Via Sleep Junkies Podcast.
- Anthony Fauci: Dr. Fauci explains how to make it through his “worst nightmare.” Via Science Friday.
Products We Are Enjoying
Raw Brazil nuts (two pounds).
Eating just one or two Brazil nuts per day is probably the most efficient way to meet your selenium requirements, and it’s pretty cheap over the long haul if you buy a big bag like this. Just one Brazil nut contains about 95 micrograms of selenium - which is an astounding 137% of the Daily Value.
And they may have other benefits as well. This weird study, for instance, found that consuming just a single dose of 20 or 50 grams of Brazil nuts substantially improved the lipid profile (LDL-C dropped by around 20 mg/dL). A similar study found a lasting decrease in inflammatory markers, including serum IL-1, IL-6, TNF-α, and IFN-γ. But you may not want to consume more than just a couple of these on a regular basis, incidentally. The safe upper limit for selenium is 400 mcg daily, which you can exceed with six kernels of Brazil nuts.
New humanOS Features
- Course Enhancement: We have added Talking Points to the Simple Food Diet course in the Ideal Weight Program, created by Stephan Guyenet. 🙌🏽
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 hopefully enhance your ability to use that information and convey it to others. No point in studying something if you can’t use that info later, right?