Newsletter #143: Napping, Near-sightedness, and....Murder Hornets? 🐝
Welcome to the newest edition of the humanOS newsletter!
This week, we learned that frequent napping may improve cognitive performance in older adults, and that slightly shortening the workweek can pay off big time in terms of health and health-related behaviors. We also discovered that the lockdown may have had a long-term indirect impact on kids’ vision.
To learn more, scroll down 👇🏼
This Week’s Research Highlights
🧠 Napping is associated with better cognitive performance.
Researchers examined health data and cognitive assessments from 2214 older Chinese adults (≥60 years old). They also surveyed participants about afternoon napping characteristics, and divided subjects into groups based upon their napping behavior. The researchers found that subjects who took regular afternoon naps performed better on multiple measures of cognition, including orientation, language, and memory, compared to non-napping counterparts. This may be through sleep’s role in the consolidation of memory, which is essential for assimilating new information. It is important to note that the relationship between napping and brain function in the elderly is somewhat complicated, depending on timing, duration, and frequency. Napping, in the context of this study, was defined as a period of sleep after lunch for at least five consecutive minutes but not more than two hours.
👩💻 Shortening the workweek may have a positive impact on multiple aspects of health.
Researchers analyzed data from a labor reform introduced in 1998 by the French government which cut the normal workweek by four hours — from 39 to 35 — without altering pay. This reform, which was later reversed, offered a sort of natural experiment for studying the impact of working hours on health without the confounder of reduced income, which (obviously) has a pretty significant independent effect. They followed the same workers over the course of the implementation of the reform, and found that all workers generally experienced increased self-reported health as well as reduced smoking. The latter was especially true among blue collar workers, who reported a 19-24% decrease in smoking. White-collar workers also experienced a 1.7-2.1% drop in BMI, which is thought to be due to increased exercise during their free time (blue collar workers tend to have more physically active jobs, which may be why they didn’t observe the same benefit). This lines up with other studies examining the impact of long work hours on employee health. We know, for instance, that working more than 49 hours per week (which is not particularly uncommon according to US surveys) is linked to 66-70% greater odds of hypertension.
👓 The pandemic may have increased nearsightedness in children.
Lockdown in response to the COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on activity patterns in young children. To investigate how home confinement may have affected vision in formative years, researchers examined school-based photoscreenings in 123535 children aged 6 to 13 years from 10 elementary schools in China over the course of six consecutive years (2015-2020). When they compared the data, the researchers determined that the prevalence of myopia in young children (ages 6-8) had increased ~1.4-3.0 times in 2020 after home confinement, versus the previous five years. This is thought to be due to reductions in time spent outdoors. Previous research has shown that more time outside is correlated with lower odds of myopia in young children, perhaps through exposure to bright sunlight.
Question of the Week
🤔 Vespa mandarinia (aka the murder hornet) is the largest hornet on Earth, and the species infamously preys upon other insects. However, native honey bees, which have evolved alongside the hornets, have developed some effective strategies to combat them. What exactly do they do?
💡 Answer (also must-see video)
Podcasts We Loved This Week
- Sinduja Srinivasan & Anna Rothschild: What Happens When You Get A COVID-19 Vaccine That Uses mRNA. Via Podcast-19 by FiveThirtyEight.
- Tim Tangherlini: How To Spot A Conspiracy Theory. Via Science Friday.
- Eric Helms: The Nutrition and Science of Natural Bodybuilding. Via Nourish Balance Thrive.
Products We Are Enjoying
truRoots Organic Quick Cook Grains
These packs of grain/bean blends are ready to go in just sixty seconds, and they are super tasty - I particularly like the Spanish style blend. Perfect for days when you’re behind on your meal prep and don’t have time to prepare and season quinoa, rice, beans, etc. Cheaper and certainly healthier than takeout.