Why Many Nonprofit (Wink, Wink) Hospitals Are Rolling in Money
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One owns a for-profit insurer, a venture capital company, and for-profit hospitals in Italy and Kazakhstan; it has just acquired its fourth for-profit hospital in Ireland. Another owns one of the largest for-profit hospitals in London, is partnering to build a massive training facility for a professional basketball team, and has launched and financed 80 for-profit start-ups. Another partners with a wellness spa where rooms cost $4,000 a night and co-invests with âleading private equity firms.â
Do these sound like charities?
These diversified businesses are, in fact, some of the countryâs largest nonprofit hospital systems. And they have somehow managed to keep myriad for-profit enterprises under their nonprofit umbrella â a status that means they pay little or no taxes, float bonds at preferred rates, and gain numerous other financial advantages.
Through legal maneuvering, regulatory neglect, and a large dollop of lobbying, they have remained tax-exempt charities, classified as 501(c)(3)s.
âHospitals are some of the biggest businesses in the U.S. â nonprofit in name only,â said Martin Gaynor, an economics and public policy professor at Carnegie Mellon University. âThey realized they could own for-profit businesses and keep their not-for-profit status. So the parking lot is for-profit; the laundry service is for-profit; they open up for-profit entities in other countries that are expressly for making money. Great work if you can get it.â
Many universitiesâ most robust income streams come from their technically nonprofit hospitals. At Stanford University, 62% of operating revenue in fiscal 2023 was from health services; at the University of Chicago, patient services brought in 49% of operating revenue in fiscal 2022.
To be sure, many hospitalsâ major source of income is still likely to be pricey patient care. Because they are nonprofit and therefore, by definition, canât show that thing called âprofit,â excess earnings are called âoperating surpluses.â Meanwhile, some nonprofit hospitals, particularly in rural areas and inner cities, struggle to stay afloat because they depend heavily on lower payments from Medicaid and Medicare and have no alternative income streams.
But investments are making âa bigger and bigger differenceâ in the bottom line of many big systems, said Ge Bai, a professor of health care accounting at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health. Investment income helped Cleveland Clinic overcome the deficit incurred during the pandemic.
When many U.S. hospitals were founded over the past two centuries, mostly by religious groups, they were accorded nonprofit status for doling out free care during an era in which fewer people had insurance and bills were modest. The institutions operated on razor-thin margins. But as more Americans gained insurance and medical treatments became more effective â and more expensive â there was money to be made.
Not-for-profit hospitals merged with one another, pursuing economies of scale, like joint purchasing of linens and surgical supplies. Then, in this century, they also began acquiring parts of the health care systems that had long been for-profit, such as doctorsâ groups, as well as imaging and surgery centers. That raised some legal eyebrows â how could a nonprofit simply acquire a for-profit? â but regulators and the IRS let it ride.
And in recent years, partnerships with, and ownership of, profit-making ventures have strayed further and further afield from the purported charitable health care mission in their community.
âWhen I first encountered it, I was dumbfounded â I said, âThis not charitable,ââ said Michael West, an attorney and senior vice president of the New York Council of Nonprofits. âIâve long questioned why these institutions get away with it. I just donât see how itâs compliant with the IRS tax code.â West also pointed out that they donât act like charities: âI mean, everyone knows someone with an outstanding $15,000 bill they canât pay.â
Hospitals get their tax breaks for providing âcharity care and community benefit.â But how much charity care is enough and, more important, what sort of activities count as âcommunity benefitâ and how to value them? IRS guidance released this year remains fuzzy on the issue.
Academics who study the subject have consistently found the value of many hospitalsâ good work pales in comparison with the value of their tax breaks. Studies have shown that generally nonprofit and for-profit hospitals spend about the same portion of their expenses on the charity care component.
Here are some things listed as âcommunity benefitâ on hospital systemsâ 990 tax forms: creating jobs; building energy-efficient facilities; hiring minority- or women-owned contractors; upgrading parks with lighting and comfortable seating; creating healing gardens and spas for patients.
All good works, to be sure, but health care?
Whatâs more, to justify engaging in for-profit business while maintaining their not-for-profit status, hospitals must connect the business revenue to that mission. Otherwise, they pay an unrelated business income tax.
âTheir CEOs â many from the corporate world â spout drivel and turn somersaults to make the case,â said Lawton Burns, a management professor at the University of Pennsylvaniaâs Wharton School. âThey do a lot of profitable stuff â theyâre very clever and entrepreneurial.â
The truth is that a number of not-for-profit hospitals have become wealthy diversified business organizations. The most visible manifestation of that is outsize executive compensation at many of the countryâs big health systems. Seven of the 10 most highly paid nonprofit CEOs in the United States run hospitals and are paid millions, sometimes tens of millions, of dollars annually. The CEOs of the Gates and Ford foundations make far less, just a bit over $1 million.
When challenged about the generous pay packages â as they often are â hospitals respond that running a hospital is a complicated business, that pharmaceutical and insurance execs make much more. Also, board compensation committees determine the payout, considering salaries at comparable institutions as well as the hospitalâs financial performance.
One obvious reason for the regulatory tolerance is that hospital systems are major employers â the largest in many states (including Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Arizona, and Delaware). They are big-time lobbying forces and major donors in Washington and in state capitals.
But some patients have had enough: In a suit brought by a local school board, a judge last year declared that four Pennsylvania hospitals in the Tower Health system had to pay property taxes because its executive pay was âeye poppingâ and it demonstrated âprofit motives through actions such as charging management fees from its hospitals.â
A 2020 Government Accountability Office report chided the IRS for its lack of vigilance in reviewing nonprofit hospitalsâ community benefit and recommended ways to âimprove IRS oversight.â A follow-up GAO report to Congress in 2023 said, âIRS officials told us that the agency had not revoked a hospitalâs tax-exempt status for failing to provide sufficient community benefits in the previous 10 yearsâ and recommended that Congress lay out more specific standards. The IRS declined to comment for this column.
Attorneys general, who regulate charity at the state level, could also get involved. But, in practice, âthere is zero accountability,â West said. âMost nonprofits live in fear of the AG. Not hospitals.â
Todayâs big hospital systems do miraculous, lifesaving stuff. But they are not channeling Mother Teresa. Maybe itâs time to end the community benefit charade for those that exploit it, and have these big businesses pay at least some tax. Communities could then use those dollars in ways that directly benefit residentsâ health.
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFFâan independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.
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The End of Alzheimer’s â by Dr. Dale Bredesen
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This one didnât use the âThe New Science OfâŚâ subtitle that many books do, and this one actually is a ânew science ofâ!
Which is exciting, and/but comes with the caveat that the overall protocol itself is still undergoing testing, but the results so far are promising. The constituent parts of the protocol are for the most already well-established, but have not previously been put together in this way.
Dr. Bredesen argues that Alzheimerâs Disease is not one condition but three (medical consensus agrees at least that it is a collection of conditions, but different schools of thought slice them differently), and outlines 36 metabolic factors that are implicated, and the good news is, most of them are within our control.
Since thereâs a lot to put together, he also offers many workarounds and âcrutchesâ, making for very practical advice.
The style of the book is on the hard end of pop-science, that is to say while the feel and tone is very pop-sciencey, there are nevertheless a lot of words that you might know but your spellchecker probably wouldnât. He does explain everything along the way, but this does mean that if youâre not already well-versed, you canât just dip in to a later point without reading the earlier parts.
Bottom line: even if you only implement half the advice in this book, youâll be doing your long-term cognitive health a huge favor.
Click here to check out The End of Alzheimerâs, and keep cognitive decline at bay!
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The first pig kidney has been transplanted into a living person. But weâre still a long way from solving organ shortages
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In a world first, we heard last week that US surgeons had transplanted a kidney from a gene-edited pig into a living human. News reports said the procedure was a breakthrough in xenotransplantation â when an organ, cells or tissues are transplanted from one species to another. https://www.youtube.com/embed/cisOFfBPZk0?wmode=transparent&start=0 The worldâs first transplant of a gene-edited pig kidney into a live human was announced last week.
Champions of xenotransplantation regard it as the solution to organ shortages across the world. In December 2023, 1,445 people in Australia were on the waiting list for donor kidneys. In the United States, more than 89,000 are waiting for kidneys.
One biotech CEO says gene-edited pigs promise âan unlimited supply of transplantable organsâ.
Not, everyone, though, is convinced transplanting animal organs into humans is really the answer to organ shortages, or even if itâs right to use organs from other animals this way.
There are two critical barriers to the procedureâs success: organ rejection and the transmission of animal viruses to recipients.
But in the past decade, a new platform and technique known as CRISPR/Cas9 â often shortened to CRISPR â has promised to mitigate these issues.
What is CRISPR?
CRISPR gene editing takes advantage of a system already found in nature. CRISPRâs âgenetic scissorsâ evolved in bacteria and other microbes to help them fend off viruses. Their cellular machinery allows them to integrate and ultimately destroy viral DNA by cutting it.
In 2012, two teams of scientists discovered how to harness this bacterial immune system. This is made up of repeating arrays of DNA and associated proteins, known as âCasâ (CRISPR-associated) proteins.
When they used a particular Cas protein (Cas9) with a âguide RNAâ made up of a singular molecule, they found they could program the CRISPR/Cas9 complex to break and repair DNA at precise locations as they desired. The system could even âknock inâ new genes at the repair site.
In 2020, the two scientists leading these teams were awarded a Nobel prize for their work.
In the case of the latest xenotransplantation, CRISPR technology was used to edit 69 genes in the donor pig to inactivate viral genes, âhumaniseâ the pig with human genes, and knock out harmful pig genes. https://www.youtube.com/embed/UKbrwPL3wXE?wmode=transparent&start=0 How does CRISPR work?
A busy time for gene-edited xenotransplantation
While CRISPR editing has brought new hope to the possibility of xenotransplantation, even recent trials show great caution is still warranted.
In 2022 and 2023, two patients with terminal heart diseases, who were ineligible for traditional heart transplants, were granted regulatory permission to receive a gene-edited pig heart. These pig hearts had ten genome edits to make them more suitable for transplanting into humans. However, both patients died within several weeks of the procedures.
Earlier this month, we heard a team of surgeons in China transplanted a gene-edited pig liver into a clinically dead man (with family consent). The liver functioned well up until the ten-day limit of the trial.
How is this latest example different?
The gene-edited pig kidney was transplanted into a relatively young, living, legally competent and consenting adult.
The total number of gene edits edits made to the donor pig is very high. The researchers report making 69 edits to inactivate viral genes, âhumaniseâ the pig with human genes, and to knockout harmful pig genes.
Clearly, the race to transform these organs into viable products for transplantation is ramping up.
From biotech dream to clinical reality
Only a few months ago, CRISPR gene editing made its debut in mainstream medicine.
In November, drug regulators in the United Kingdom and US approved the worldâs first CRISPR-based genome-editing therapy for human use â a treatment for life-threatening forms of sickle-cell disease.
The treatment, known as Casgevy, uses CRISPR/Cas-9 to edit the patientâs own blood (bone-marrow) stem cells. By disrupting the unhealthy gene that gives red blood cells their âsickleâ shape, the aim is to produce red blood cells with a healthy spherical shape.
Although the treatment uses the patientâs own cells, the same underlying principle applies to recent clinical xenotransplants: unsuitable cellular materials may be edited to make them therapeutically beneficial in the patient.
Weâll be talking more about gene-editing
Medicine and gene technology regulators are increasingly asked to approve new experimental trials using gene editing and CRISPR.
However, neither xenotransplantation nor the therapeutic applications of this technology lead to changes to the genome that can be inherited.
For this to occur, CRISPR edits would need to be applied to the cells at the earliest stages of their life, such as to early-stage embryonic cells in vitro (in the lab).
In Australia, intentionally creating heritable alterations to the human genome is a criminal offence carrying 15 yearsâ imprisonment.
No jurisdiction in the world has laws that expressly permits heritable human genome editing. However, some countries lack specific regulations about the procedure.
Is this the future?
Even without creating inheritable gene changes, however, xenotransplantation using CRISPR is in its infancy.
For all the promise of the headlines, there is not yet one example of a stable xenotransplantation in a living human lasting beyond seven months.
While authorisation for this recent US transplant has been granted under the so-called âcompassionate useâ exemption, conventional clinical trials of pig-human xenotransplantation have yet to commence.
But the prospect of such trials would likely require significant improvements in current outcomes to gain regulatory approval in the US or elsewhere.
By the same token, regulatory approval of any âoff-the-shelfâ xenotransplantation organs, including gene-edited kidneys, would seem some way off.
Christopher Rudge, Law lecturer, University of Sydney
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Our blood-brain barrier stops bugs and toxins getting to our brain. Hereâs how it works
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Our brain is an extremely complex and delicate organ. Our body fiercely protects it by holding onto things that help it and keeping harmful things out, such as bugs that can cause infection and toxins.
It does that though a protective layer called the blood-brain barrier. Hereâs how it works, and what it means for drug design.
First, letâs look at the circulatory system
Adults have roughly 30 trillion cells in their body. Every cell needs a variety of nutrients and oxygen, and they produce waste, which needs to be taken away.
Our circulatory system provides this service, delivering nutrients and removing waste.
Where the circulatory system meets your cells, it branches down to tiny tubes called capillaries. These tiny tubes, about one-tenth the width of a human hair, are also made of cells.
But in most capillaries, there are some special features (known as fenestrations) that allow relatively free exchange of nutrients and waste between the blood and the cells of your tissues.
Itâs kind of like pizza delivery
One way to think about the way the circulation works is like a pizza delivery person in a big city. On the really big roads (vessels) there are walls and you canât walk up to the door of the house and pass someone the pizza.
But once you get down to the little suburban streets (capillaries), the design of the streets means you can stop, get off your scooter and walk up to the door to deliver the pizza (nutrients).
We often think of the brain as a spongy mass without much blood in it. In reality, the average brain has about 600 kilometres of blood vessels.
The difference between the capillaries in most of the brain and those elsewhere is that these capillaries are made of specialised cells that are very tightly joined together and limit the free exchange of anything dissolved in your blood. These are sometimes called continuous capillaries.
This is the blood brain barrier. Itâs not so much a bag around your brain stopping things from getting in and out but more like walls on all the streets, even the very small ones.
The only way pizza can get in is through special slots and these are just the right shape for the pizza box.
The blood brain barrier is set up so there are specialised transporters (like pizza box slots) for all the required nutrients. So mostly, the only things that can get in are things that there are transporters for or things that look very similar (on a molecular scale).
The analogy does fall down a little bit because the pizza box slot applies to nutrients that dissolve in water. Things that are highly soluble in fat can often bypass the slots in the wall.
Why do we have a blood-brain barrier?
The blood brain barrier is thought to exist for a few reasons.
First, it protects the brain from toxins you might eat (think chemicals that plants make) and viruses that often can infect the rest of your body but usually donât make it to your brain.
It also provides protection by tightly regulating the movement of nutrients and waste in and out, providing a more stable environment than in the rest of the body.
Lastly, it serves to regulate passage of immune cells, preventing unnecessary inflammation which could damage cells in the brain.
What it means for medicines
One consequence of this tight regulation across the blood brain barrier is that if you want a medicine that gets to the brain, you need to consider how it will get in.
There are a few approaches. Highly fat-soluble molecules can often pass into the brain, so you might design your drug so it is a bit greasy.
Another option is to link your medicine to another molecule that is normally taken up into the brain so it can hitch a ride, or a âpro-drugâ, which looks like a molecule that is normally transported.
Using it to our advantage
You can also take advantage of the blood brain barrier.
Opioids used for pain relief often cause constipation. They do this because their target (opioid receptors) are also present in the nervous system of the intestines, where they act to slow movement of the intestinal contents.
Imodium (Loperamide), which is used to treat diarrhoea, is actually an opioid, but it has been specifically designed so it canât cross the blood brain barrier.
This design means it can act on opioid receptors in the gastrointestinal tract, slowing down the movement of contents, but does not act on brain opioid receptors.
In contrast to Imodium, Ozempic and Victoza (originally designed for type 2 diabetes, but now popular for weight-loss) both have a long fat attached, to improve the length of time they stay in the body.
A consequence of having this long fat attached is that they can cross the blood-brain barrier, where they act to suppress appetite. This is part of the reason they are so effective as weight-loss drugs.
So while the blood brain barrier is important for protecting the brain it presents both a challenge and an opportunity for development of new medicines.
Sebastian Furness, ARC Future Fellow, School of Biomedical Sciences, The University of Queensland
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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A Deeper Dive Into Seaweed
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We wrote briefly about nori yesterday, when we compared it with well-known superfood spirulina. In nutritional terms, it blew spirulina out of the water:
Spirulina vs Nori â Which Is Healthier?
We also previously touched on it here:
21% Stronger Bones in a Year at 62? Yes, Itâs Possible (No Calcium Supplements Needed!) â nori was an important part of the diet enjoyed here
What is nori?
Nori is a seaweed, but that can mean lots of different things. In noriâs case, itâs an aggregate of several kinds of red algae that clump together in the sea.
When dried and/or toasted (which processes improve* the nutritional value rather than diminishing it, by the way), it looks dark green or dark purple to black in color.
*Effects of pan- and air fryer-roasting on volatile and umami compounds and antioxidant activity of dried laver (Porphyra dentata) â this is nori, by another name
If you enjoy sushi, nori is the dark flat sheety stuff that other things are often wrapped in.
The plant that has animal nutrients
As established in the head-to-head we linked above, nori is a nutritional powerhouse. But not only is it very full of the perhaps-expected vitamins and minerals, it also contains:
Omega-3 fatty acids, including EPA, which plants do not normally have (plants usually have just ALA, which the body can convert into other forms including EPA). While ALA is versatile, having EPA in food saves the body the job of converting it, and thus makes it more readily bioavailable. For more on the benefits of this, see:
What Omega-3 Fatty Acids Really Do For Us
Iodine, which land plants donât generally have, but seaweed usually does. However, nori contains less iodine than other kinds of seaweed, which is (counterintuitively) good, since other kinds of seaweed often contain megadoses that go too far the other way and can cause different health problems.
- Recommended daily amount of iodine: 150Âľg â note thatâs micrograms, not milligrams
- One 10g serving of dried nori contains: 232Âľg â this is good
- Tolerable daily upper limit of iodine: 1,100Âľg (i.e: 1.1mg)
- One 10g serving of dried kombu (kelp) contains: 13,270Âľg (i.e: 13.3mg) â this is far too much; not good!
So: a portion of nori puts us into the healthiest spot of the range, whereas a portion of another example seaweed would put us nearly 13x over the tolerable upper limit.
For why this matters, see:
- 8 Signs Of Iodine Deficiency You Might Not Expect
- Foods For Managing Hypothyroidism (incl. Hashimotoâs)
- Eat To Beat Hyperthyroidism!
As you might note from the mentions of both hypo- and hyperthyroidism, (which are exacerbated by too little and too much iodine, respectively) hitting the iodine sweet spot is important, and nori is a great way to do that.
Vitamin B12, again not usually found in plants (most vegans supplement, often with nutritional yeast, which is technically neither an animal nor a plant). However, nori scores even higher:
Vitamin B12-Containing Plant Food Sources for Vegetarians
Beyond nutrients
Nori is also one of the few foods that actually live up the principle of a âdetox dietâ, as it can help remove toxins such as dioxins:
Detox diets for toxin elimination and weight management: a critical review of the evidence
Itâs also beenâŚ
ârevealed to have anti-aging, anti-cancer, anti-coagulant, anti-inflammatory, anti-microbial, anti-oxidant, anti-diabetic, anti-Alzheimer and anti-tuberculose activities.â
~ Dr. ĹĂźkran Ăakir Arica et al.
Read: A study on the rich compounds and potential benefits of algae: A review
(for this to make sense you will need to remember that nori is, as we mentioned, an aggregate of diverse red algae species; in that paper, you can scroll down to Table 1, and see which species has which qualities. Anything whose name starts with âPorphyraâ or âPorphridumâ is found in nori)
Is it safe?
Usually! There are two potential safety issues:
- Seaweed can, while itâs busy absorbing valuable minerals from the sea, also absorb heavy metals if there are such pollutants in the region. For this reason, it is good to buy a product with trusted certifications, such that it will have been tested for such along the way.
- Seaweed can, while itâs busy absorbing things plants donât usually have from the sea, also absorb allergens from almost-equally-small crustaceans. So if you have a seafood allergy, seaweed could potentially trigger that.
Want to try some?
We donât sell it, but here for your convenience is an example product on Amazon đ
Enjoy!
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Atomic Habits â by James Clear
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James Clear’s Atomic Habits has become “the” go-to book about the power of habit-forming. And, there’s no shortage of competition out there, so that’s quite a statement. What makes this book stand out?
A lot of books start by assuming you want to build habits. That can seem a fair assumption; after all, we picked up the book! But an introductory chapter really hammers home the idea in a way that makes it a lot more motivational:
- Habits are the compound interest of productivity
- This means that progress is not linear, but exponential
- Habits can also be stacked, and thus become synergistic
- The more positive habits you add incrementally, the easier they become because each thing is making your life easier/better
For example:
- It’s easier to save money if you’re in good health
- It’s easier to sleep better if you do not have financial worries
- It’s easier to build your relationship with your loved ones if you’re not tired
âŚand so on.
For many people this presents a Catch-22 problem! Clear instead presents it as an opportunity… Start wherever you like, but just start small, with some two-minute thing, and build from there.
A lot of the book is given over to:
- how to form effective habits (using his “Four Laws”)
- how to build them into your life
- how to handle mishaps
- how to make sure your habits are working for you
- how to see habits as part of your identity, and not just a goal to be checked off
The last one is perhaps keyâgoals cease to be motivating once accomplished. Habits, on the other hand, keep spiralling upwards (if you guide them appropriately).
There’s lots more we could say, but it’s a one-minute book review, so we’ll just close by saying:
This book can help you to become the kind of person who genuinely gets a little better each day, and reaps the benefits over time.
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Why You Probably Need More Sleep
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Sleep: yes, you really do still need it!
We asked you how much sleep you usually get, and got the above-pictured, below-described set of responses:
- A little of a third of all respondents selected the option â< 7 hoursâ
- However, because respondents also selected options such as < 6 hours, < 5 hours, and < 4 hours, so if we include those in the tally, the actual total percentage of respondents who reported getting under 7 hours, is actually more like 62%, or just under two thirds of all respondents.
- Nine respondents, which was about 5% of the total, reported usually getting under 4 hours sleep
- A little over quarter of respondents reported usually getting between 7 and 8 hours sleep
- Fifteen respondents, which was a little under 10% of the total, reported usually getting between 8 and 9 hours of sleep
- Three respondents, which was a little under 2% of the total, reported getting over 9 hours of sleep
- In terms of the classic âyou should get 7â9 hours sleepâ, approximately a third of respondents reported getting this amount.
You need to get 7â9 hours sleep: True or False?
True! Unless you have a (rare!) mutated ADRB1 gene, which reduces that.
The way to know whether you have this, without genomic testing to know for sure, is: do you regularly get under 6.5 hours sleep, and yet continue to go through life bright-eyed and bushy-tailed? If so, you probably have that gene. If you experience daytime fatigue, brain fog, and restlessness, you probably donât.
About that mutated ADRB1 gene:
NIH | Gene identified in people who need little sleep
Quality of sleep matters as much as duration, and a lot of studies use the âRU-Satedâ framework, which assesses six key dimensions of sleep that have been consistently associated with better health outcomes. These are:
- regularity / usual hours
- satisfaction with sleep
- alertness during waking hours
- timing of sleep
- efficiency of sleep
- duration of sleep
But, that doesnât mean that you can skimp on the last one if the others are in order. In fact, getting a good 7 hours sleep can reduce your risk of getting a cold by three or four times (compared with six or fewer hours):
Behaviorally Assessed Sleep and Susceptibility to the Common Cold
^This study was about the common cold, but you may be aware there are more serious respiratory viruses freely available, and you donât want those, either.
Napping is good for the health: True or False?
True or False, depending on how youâre doing it!
If youâre trying to do it to sleep less in total (per polyphasic sleep scheduling), then no, this will not work in any sustainable fashion and will be ruinous to the health. We did a Mythbusting Friday special on specifically this, a while back:
Could Just Two Hours Sleep Per Day Be Enough?
PS: you might remember Betteridgeâs Law of Headlines
If youâre doing it as a energy-boosting supplement to a reasonable nightâs sleep, napping can indeed be beneficial to the health, and can give benefits such as:
However! There is still a right and a wrong way to go about it, and we wrote about this previously, for a Saturday Life Hacks edition of 10almonds:
How To Nap Like A Pro (No More “Sleep Hangovers”!)
As we get older, we need less sleep: True or False
False, with one small caveat.
The small caveat: children and adolescents need 9â12 hours sleep because, uncredited as it goes, they are doing some seriously impressive bodybuilding, and that is exhausting to the body. So, an adult (with a normal lifestyle, who is not a bodybuilder) will tend to need less sleep than a child/adolescent.
But, the statement âAs we get older, we need less sleepâ is generally taken to mean âPeople in the 65+ age bracket need less sleep than younger adultsâ, and this popular myth is based on anecdotal observational evidence: older people tend to sleep less (as our survey above shows! For any who arenât aware, our readership is heavily weighted towards the 60+ demographic), and still continue functioning, after all.
Just because we survive something with a degree of resilience doesnât mean itâs good for us.
In fact, there can be serious health risks from not getting enough sleep in later years, for example:
Sleep deficiency promotes Alzheimer’s disease development and progression
Want to get better sleep?
What gets measured, gets done. Sleep tracking apps can be a really good tool for getting oneâs sleep on a healthier track. We compared and contrasted some popular ones:
The Head-To-Head Of Google and Appleâs Top Apps For Getting Your Head Down
Take good care of yourself!
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