Sleep Tracking, For Five Million Nights

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5 Sleep Phenotypes, By Actual Science

You probably know people can be broadly divided into “early birds” and “night owls”:

Early Bird Or Night Owl? Genes vs Environment

…and then the term “hummingbird” gets used for a person who flits between the two.

That’s three animals so far. If you read a book we reviewed recently, specifically this one:

The Power of When – by Dr. Michael Breus

…then you may have used the guide within to self-diagnose your circadian rhythm type (chronotype) according to Dr. Breus’s system, which divides people into bears, lions, wolves, and dolphins.

That’s another four animals. If you have a FitBit, it can “diagnose” you with being those and/or a menagerie of others, such as giraffe, hedgehog, parrot, and tortoise:

How Fitbit Developed the Sleep Profile Experience (Part 2 – Sleep Animals)

Five million nights

A team of researchers recently took a step away from this veritable zoo of 11 different animals and counting, and used a sophisticated modelling system to create a spatial-temporal map of people’s sleep habits, and this map created five main “islands” that people’s sleep habits could settle on, or sometimes move from island to island.

Those “five million nights” by the way? It was actually 5,095,798 nights! You might notice that would take from the 2020s to the 15970s to complete, so this was rather a matter of monitoring 33,152 individuals between January and October of the same year. Between them, they got those 5,095,798 nights of sleep (or in some cases, nights of little or no sleep, but still, they were there for the nights).

The five main phenotypes that the researchers found were:

  1. What we think of as “normal” sleep. In this phenotype, people get about eight hours of uninterrupted sleep for at least six days in a row.
  2. As above for half the nights, but they only sleep for short periods of time in bouts of less than three hours the other half.
  3. As per normal sleep, but with one interrupted night per week, consisting of a 5 hour sleep period and then broken sleep for a few more hours.
  4. As per normal sleep generally, but with occasional nights in which long bouts of sleep are separated by a mid-sleep waking.
  5. Sleeping for very short periods of time every night. This phenotype was the rarest the researchers found, and represents extremely disrupted sleep.

As you might suspect, phenotype 1 is healthier than phenotype 5. But that’s not hugely informational, as the correlation between getting good sleep and having good health is well-established. So, what did the study teach us?

❝We found that little changes in sleep quality helped us identify health risks. Those little changes wouldn’t show up on an average night, or on a questionnaire, so it really shows how wearables help us detect risks that would otherwise be missed.❞

~ Dr. Benjamin Smarr

More specifically,

❝We found that the little differences in how sleep disruptions occur can tell us a lot. Even if these instances are rare, their frequency is also telling. So it’s not just whether you sleep well or not – it’s the patterns of sleep over time where the key info hides❞

~ Dr. Edward Wang

…and, which gets to the absolute point,

❝If you imagine there’s a landscape of sleep types, then it’s less about where you tend to live on that landscape, and more about how often you leave that area❞

~ Dr. Varun Viswanath

In other words: if your sleep pattern is not ideal, that’s one thing and it’d probably be good to address it, by improving your sleep. However, if your sleep pattern changes phenotype without an obvious known reason why, this may be considered an alarm bell warning of something else that needs addressing, which may be an underlying illness or condition—meaning it can be worthwhile being a little extra vigilant when it comes to regular health screenings, in case something new has appeared.

Want to read more?

You can read the paper in full here:

Five million nights: temporal dynamics in human sleep phenotypes

Take care!

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  • Are Electrolyte Supplements Worth It?

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    When To Take Electrolytes (And When We Shouldn’t!)

    Any sports nutrition outlet will sell electrolyte supplements. Sometimes in the form of sports drinks that claim to be more hydrating than water, or tablets that can be dissolved in water to make the same. How do they work, and should we be drinking them?

    What are electrolytes?

    They’re called “electrolytes” because they are ionized particles (so, they have a positive or negative electrical charge, depending on which kind of ion they are) that are usually combined in the form of salts.

    The “first halves” of the salts include:

    • Sodium
    • Potassium
    • Calcium
    • Magnesium

    The “second halves” of the salts include:

    • Chloride
    • Phosphate
    • Bicarbonate
    • Nitrate

    It doesn’t matter too much which way they’re combined, provided we get what we need. Specifically, the body needs them in a careful balance. Too much or too little, and bad things will start happening to us.

    If we live in a temperate climate with a moderate lifestyle and a balanced diet, and have healthy working kidneys, usually our kidneys will keep them all in balance.

    Why might we need to supplement?

    Firstly, of course, you might have a dietary deficiency. Magnesium deficiency in particular is very common in North America, as people simply do not eat as much greenery as they ideally would.

    But, also, you might sweat out your electrolytes, in which case, you will need to replace them.

    In particular, endurance training and High Intensity Interval Training are likely to prompt this.

    However… Are you in a rush? Because if not, you might just want to recover more slowly:

    ❝Vigorous exercise and warm/hot temperatures induce sweat production, which loses both water and electrolytes. Both water and sodium need to be replaced to re-establish “normal” total body water (euhydration).

    This replacement can be by normal eating and drinking practices if there is no urgency for recovery.

    But if rapid recovery (<24 h) is desired or severe hypohydration (>5% body mass) is encountered, aggressive drinking of fluids and consuming electrolytes should be encouraged to facilitate recovery❞

    Source: Fluid and electrolyte needs for training, competition, and recovery

    Should we just supplement anyway, as a “catch-all” to be sure?

    Probably not. In particular, it is easy to get too much sodium in one’s diet, let alone by supplementation.And, oversupplementation of calcium is very common, and causes its own health problems. See:

    To look directly to the science on this one, we see a general consensus amongst research reviews: “this is complicated and can go either way depending on what else people are doing”:

    Well, that’s not helpful. Any clearer pointers?

    Yes! Researchers Latzka and Mountain put together a very practical list of tips. Rather, they didn’t put it as a list, but the following bullet points are information extracted directly from their abstract, though we’ve also linked the full article below:

    • It is recommended that individuals begin exercise when adequately hydrated.
      • This can be facilitated by drinking 400 mL to 600 mL of fluid 2 hours before beginning exercise and drinking sufficient fluid during exercise to prevent dehydration from exceeding 2% body weight.
    • A practical recommendation is to drink small amounts of fluid (150-300 mL) every 15 to 20 minutes of exercise, varying the volume depending on sweating rate.
      • During exercise lasting less than 90 minutes, water alone is sufficient for fluid replacement
      • During prolonged exercise lasting longer than 90 minutes, commercially available carbohydrate electrolyte beverages should be considered to provide an exogenous carbohydrate source to sustain carbohydrate oxidation and endurance performance.
    • Electrolyte supplementation is generally not necessary because dietary intake is adequate to offset electrolytes lost in sweat and urine; however, during initial days of hot-weather training or when meals are not calorically adequate, supplemental salt intake may be indicated to sustain sodium balance.

    Source: Water and electrolyte requirements for exercise

    Bonus tip:

    We’ve talked before about the specific age-related benefits of creatine supplementation, but if you’re doing endurance training or HIIT, you might also want to consider a creatine-electrolyte combination sports drink (even if you make it yourself):

    Creatine-electrolyte supplementation improves repeated sprint cycling performance: a double-blind randomized control study

    Where can I get electrolyte supplements?

    They’re easy to find in any sports nutrition store, or you can buy them online; here’s an example product on Amazon for your convenience

    You can also opt for natural and/or homemade electrolyte drinks:

    Healthline | 8 Healthy Drinks Rich in Electrolytes

    Enjoy!

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  • Alzheimer’s Sex Differences May Not Be What They Appear

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    Alzheimer’s Sex Differences May Not Be What They Appear

    Women get Alzheimer’s at nearly twice the rate than men do, and deteriorate more rapidly after onset, too.

    So… Why?

    There are many potential things to look at, but four stand out for quick analysis:

    • Chromosomes: women usually have XX chromosomes, to men’s usual XY. There are outliers to both groups, people with non-standard combinations of chromosomes, but not commonly enough to throw out the stats.
    • Hormones: women usually have high estrogen and low testosterone, compared to men. Again there are outliers and this is a huge oversimplification that doesn’t even look at other sex hormones, but broadly speaking (which sounds vague, but is actually what is represented in epidemiological studies), it will be so.
    • Anatomy: humans have some obvious sexual dimorphism (again, there are outliers, but again, not enough to throw out the stats); this seems least likely to be relevant (Alzheimer’s is probably not stored in the breasts, for examples), though average body composition (per muscle:fat ratio) could admittedly be a factor.
    • Social/lifestyle: once again, #NotAllWomen etc, but broadly speaking, women and men often tend towards different social roles in some ways, and as we know, of course lifestyle can play a part in disease pathogenesis.

    As a quick aside before we continue, if you’re curious about those outliers, then a wiki-walk into the fascinating world of intersex conditions, for example, could start here. But by and large, this won’t affect most people.

    So… Which parts matter?

    Back in 2018, Dr. Maria Teresa Ferretti et al. kicked up some rocks in this regard, looking not just at genes (as much research has focussed on) or amyloid-β (again, well-studied) but also at phenotypes and metabolic and social factors—bearing in mind that all three of those are heavily influenced by hormones. Noting, for example, that (we’ll quote directly here):

    • Men and women with Alzheimer disease (AD) exhibit different cognitive and psychiatric symptoms, and women show faster cognitive decline after diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) or AD dementia.
    • Brain atrophy rates and patterns differ along the AD continuum between the sexes; in MCI, brain atrophy is faster in women than in men.
    • The prevalence and effects of cerebrovascular, metabolic and socio-economic risk factors for AD are different between men and women.

    See: Sex differences in Alzheimer disease—the gateway to precision medicine

    So, have scientists controlled for each of those factors?

    Mostly not! But they have found clues, anyway, while noting the limitations of the previous way of conducting studies. For example:

    ❝Women are more likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease and experience faster cognitive decline compared to their male counterparts. These sex differences should be accounted for when designing medications and conducting clinical trials❞

    ~ Dr. Feixiong Cheng

    Read: Research finds sex differences in immune response and metabolism drive Alzheimer’s disease

    Did you spot the clue?

    It was “differences in immune response and metabolism”. These things are both influenced by (not outright regulated by, but strongly influenced by) sex hormones.

    ❝As [hormonal] sex influences both the immune system and metabolic process, our study aimed to identify how all of these individual factors influence one another to contribute to Alzheimer’s disease❞

    ~ Dr. Justin Lathia

    Ignoring for a moment progesterone’s role in metabolism, estrogen is an immunostimulant and testosterone is an immunosuppressant. These thus both also have an effect in inflammation, which yes, includes neuroinflammation.

    But wait a minute, shouldn’t that mean that women are more protected, not less?

    It should! Except… Alzheimer’s is an age-related disease, and in the age-bracket that generally gets Alzheimer’s (again, there are outliers), menopause has been done and dusted for quite a while.

    Which means, and this is critical: post-menopausal women not on HRT are essentially left without the immune boost usually directed by estrogen, while men of the same age will be ticking over with their physiology that (unlike that of the aforementioned women) was already adapted to function with negligible estrogen.

    Specifically:

    ❝The metabolic consequences of estrogen decline during menopause accelerate neuropathology in women❞

    ~ Dr. Rasha Saleh

    Source: Hormone replacement therapy is associated with improved cognition and larger brain volumes in at-risk APOE4 women

    Critical idea to take away from all this:

    Alzheimer’s research is going to be misleading if it doesn’t take into account sex differences, and not just that, but also specifically age-relevant sex differences—because that can flip the narrative. If we don’t take age into account, we could be left thinking estrogen is to blame, when in fact, it appears to be the opposite.

    In the meantime, if you’re a woman of a certain age, you might talk with a doctor about whether HRT could be beneficial for you, if you haven’t already:

    ❝Women at genetic risk for AD (carrying at least one APOE e4 allele) seem to be particularly benefiting from MHT❞

    (MHT = Menopausal Hormone Therapy; also commonly called HRT, which is the umbrella term for Hormone Replacement Therapies in general)

    ~ Dr. Herman Depypere

    Source study: Menopause hormone therapy significantly alters pathophysiological biomarkers of Alzheimer’s disease

    Pop-sci press release version: HRT could ward off Alzheimer’s among at-risk women

    Take care!

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  • Stop Sabotaging Your Weight Loss – by Jennifer Powter, MSc

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    This is not a dieting book, and it’s not a motivational pep talk.

    The book starts with the assumption that you do want to lose weight (it also assumes you’re a woman, and probably over 40… that’s just the book’s target market, but the same advice is good even if that’s not you), and that you’ve probably been trying, on and off, for a while. Her position is simple:

    ❝I don’t believe that you have a weight loss problem. I believe that you have a self-sabotage problem❞

    ~ Jennifer Powter, MSc

    As to how this sabotage may be occurring, Powter talks about fears that may be holding you back, including but not limited to:

    • Fear of failure
    • Fear of the unknown
    • Fear of loss
    • Fear of embarrassment
    • Fear of your weight not being the reason your life sucks

    Far from putting the reader down, though, Powter approaches everything with compassion. To this end, her prescription starts with encouraging self-love. Not when you’re down to a certain size, not when you’re conforming perfectly to a certain diet, but now. You don’t have to be perfect to be worthy of love.

    On the topic of perfection: a recurring theme in the book is the danger of perfectionism. In her view, perfectionism is nothing more nor less than the most justifiable way to hold yourself back in life.

    Lastly, she covers mental reframes, with useful questions to ask oneself on a daily basis, to ensure progressing step by step into your best life.

    In short: if you’d like to lose weight and have been trying for a while, maybe on and off, this book could get you out of that cycle and into a much better state of being.

    Get your copy of “Stop Sabotaging Your Weight Loss” from Amazon today!

    Share This Post

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  • 52 Weeks to Better Mental Health – by Dr. Tina Tessina

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    We’ve written before about the health benefits of journaling, but how to get started, and how to make it a habit, and what even to write about?

    Dr. Tessina presents a year’s worth of journaling prompts with explanations and exercises, and no, they’re not your standard CBT flowchart things, either. Rather, they not only prompt genuine introspection, but also are crafted to be consistently upliftingyes, even if you are usually the most disinclined to such positivity, and approach such exercises with cynicism.

    There’s an element of guidance beyond that, too, and as such, this book is as much a therapist-in-a-book as you might find. Of course, no book can ever replace a competent and compatible therapist, but then, competent and compatible therapists are often harder to find and can’t usually be ordered for a few dollars with next-day shipping.

    Bottom line: if undertaken with seriousness, this book will be an excellent investment in your mental health and general wellbeing.

    Click here to check out 52 Weeks to Better Mental Health, and get on the best path for you!

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  • Turmeric: Raw Root, Powder, Tea, Or…?

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!

    Have a question or a request? We love to hear from you!

    In cases where we’ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future too—there’s always more to say!

    As ever: if the question/request can be answered briefly, we’ll do it here in our Q&A Thursday edition. If not, we’ll make a main feature of it shortly afterwards!

    So, no question/request too big or small 😎

    ❝Is turmeric infused water better or chewing half an inch of raw turmeric better? I am trying to work on my immunity as this year I have suffered the most with my allergies in the last 20 years. In case you can guide me, I will be thankful.❞

    Great question! First of all, a quick recap of the properties of turmeric (and its relevant active compound, curcumin)

    Let’s do a quick run-down:

    If you take curcumin with black pepper, it allows your body to use the curcumin around 2,000% better. This goes whether you’re cooking with both, or take them as a supplement (they’re commonly sold as a combo-capsule for this reason).

    Note: you mentioned an infusion or chewing the root, so perhaps you are not having black pepper with either of those. That’s fine, but try to have it near to black pepper (for example, perhaps while cooking a meal in which you use black pepper, so you take the turmeric and then you eat the meal).

    Extra note: in fact, that’s ideal, because curcumin is fat-soluble, so having it with (or near in time to) consuming fats (such as perhaps used in cooking) is a great way to do it.

    Curcumin vs allergies, specifically

    For any thinking “that wasn’t on the list”… It was hidden! It comes with curcumin’s anti-inflammatory and antioxidant powers.

    See for example:

    food vs supplement

    You didn’t ask this, but it’ll be helpful for understanding if we quickly cover this first.

    • Turmeric root is just that: a root, which contains abundant phytochemicals, and/but is not at all standardized in dosage
    • Curcumin extract, on the other hand, have been standardized, optimized, and are metabolized much more quickly

    …which latter can be a problem, because it’s been taken apart and used for scrap metabolites faster than the body could actually make use of the curcumin as-is.

    The black pepper hack fixes this, by the way, because of how it improves absorption.

    You may be thinking: isn’t this going to cause the same problem you were just talking about, and cause it to be metabolized too quickly? And the answer is: no! How piperine works is almost the opposite; it protects the curcumin in the turmeric from our digestive enzymes, and thus allows them to get absorbed without being broken down too quickly—thus increasing the bioavailability by slowing the process down.

    In short: food is best, but supplements are fine for anyone whose local supermarkets don’t sell turmeric root. Make sure to get it from a vendor who has transparency about their processes and has reputable certifications against heavy metal contamination though, because that’s especially common in cheap turmeric/curcumin supplements.

    The different ways of taking it

    There are a few more options than those you mentioned, so let’s quickly note:

    • Infusion: the chopped/grated root is steeped in hot water, and then we drink the hot water (sometimes called “turmeric tea”) and discard the solids
    • Suspension: the dried, powdered root is mixed in water, which we then drink in its entirety
    • Decoction: the finely chopped/grated root is steeped in hot water, and then we consume this in its entirety, which most people don’t find pleasant
    • Mastication only: chewing the root, spitting out the fibrous remnants
    • Solid ingestion: eating the root

    All of these will allow you to gain the benefits of curcumin (wherever that yellow-red pigment goes, so goes the curcumin), but only those which include consuming the solids will give you the full benefit (as otherwise, you are discarding a large amount of the curcumin with the solids that you discard).

    So, we can remove both of the methods that you mentioned (infusion and chewing, assuming you meant chewing only, and not eating).

    Things tend to lose potency with drying and grinding processes, not to mention long-term storage, so we can also remove suspension from the list.

    That leaves decoction and solid ingestion. Since solid ingestion is not comfortable for most people without cooking the root, that leaves decoction as the superior method unless you personally are happy to just eat raw turmeric root.

    However!

    Out of the two you presented, infusion can be improved if a) you make the infusion very strong, by grating the root before steeping, and letting it steep for a good while, and b) if practical, throw the grated root (after pouring the tea) into a dish where its flavor will be appropriate. If this seems strange, like throwing a waste product into your meal, then remember that that’s only a matter of convention: physically, what it is is cooked (boiling is cooking!) grated turmeric, nothing more nor less.

    At the end of the day though, the way that works best will be the way that you enjoy most (or if that’s not an option, dislike least), and thus will do more often.

    Want to know more?

    Check out:

    Turmeric (Curcumin) Dos and Don’ts With Dr. Kim

    Enjoy!

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  • Triple Life Threat – by Donald R. Lyman

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    This book takes a similar approach to “How Not To Die” (which we featured previously), but focussed specifically on three things, per the title: chronic pulmonary obstructive disease (CPOD), diabetes (type 2), and Alzheimer’s disease.

    Lyman strikes a great balance of being both information-dense and accessible; there’s a lot of reference material in here, and the reader is not assumed to have a lot of medical knowledge—but we’re not patronized either, and this is an informative manual, not a sensationalized scaremongering piece.

    All in all… if you have known risk factors for one or more of three diseases this book covers, the information within could well be a lifesaver.

    Get Your Copy Of “Triple Life Threat” On Amazon Today!

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