Failure to Communicate, and New Sleep Insights

Missed Opportunities

This year over 120 million people tuned in to watch the Super Bowl. That’s over 240 million captive eyeballs. The perfect opportunity to share a message if you have one. And a lot of people did. Unfortunately, those messages came from the same handful of industries that continue to erode society.

Companies that make their profits by selling processed food, soda, alcohol, pharmaceutical drugs, and online gambling services (a disturbingly growing trend detailed in this 60 Minutes segment).

There were 36 ads in the first half of the Super Bowl. Half of them, 18, were for products and services in the categories mentioned above. They included: M&Ms, Popeyes, Pringles, Lindt Chocolates, Nerds, Oreos, Reese’s, Dunkin Donuts, Hellman’s Mayonnaise, Dr. Pepper, Mountain Dew, Starry, Poppi, Michelob Ultra, Coors Light, Bet MGM, Fanduel, and the pharmaceutical drug Veozah (to “treat” hot flashes)

Worse still, the ads featured people like Dan Marino, Chris Pratt, Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, and Tom Brady. An affluent list of people who surely didn’t need the extra paycheck but apparently had no problem cashing it even though I’m sure none of them use the products they were endorsing and telling the viewers to support.

The remaining 18 commercials were not any better. They were for cars, or car insurance, or telling would be consumers to “Shop Like A Billionaire” and buy things they don’t need. Perhaps the second half commercials proved better, but I doubt it and I didn’t stick around to find out.

The only positive and uplifting message was from Hegetsus.com. Formed by a coalition of Jesus followers of diverse background, they have been investing in spreading the story of Jesus that they believe in. One filled with love, compassion, and kindness to others. No, I’m not trying to get religious, but these ads were the only ones I saw that made me feel good and the message is one I can get behind.

Imagine if our elected leaders, politicians, and health experts had as much gumption as Hegetsus.com. Imagine if they took the opportunity during the most viewed event of the year to share information about how to improve your health. Or ways to reduce stress. Or decided it was the perfect time to announce a new initiative to tackle the growing health epidemic we face. Imagine a world where our leaders did something productive for the people. Yes, I can dream.

The Super Bowl ads and growing neglect from our government is especially disheartening when I look at the articles (a loose term for the stories journalists publish completely devoid of usefulness) and videos that were shared and recommended to me this week. Almost all of which were related to weight loss.

For over a year now the new class of “weight-loss” drugs, GLP1 agonists, have been all of the rage, and as profits from selling these drugs have continued to soar the media has been doing its job to support the growth with little concern for negative downstream effects. Until this week.

Three separate articles, one from The New York Times and two from The Atlantic, raised concerns about the drugs ineffectiveness in some patients, dangerous side effects, and the dramatic muscle loss caused by these drugs.

Loss of lean mass, which includes muscle, bone, and even ligaments, is a serious side effect of the new class of weight-loss drugs. Muscle loss specifically can account for up to 40 percent of the weight lost. It’s particularly worrying considering that seniors, aged >65 years, make up 26 percent of the patients taking weight-loss drugs. They’re experiencing frailty from muscle and bone loss at an accelerated rate, increasing their risk of falling and osteoporosis. Of note falls and hip fractures are the leading cause of fatal and nonfatal injuries among seniors.

Not surprisingly a new market has emerged to combat the muscle loss caused by weight-loss drugs. Companies like Daily Harvest are marketing “companion meals” that are high in protein. Gyms are selling “companion workouts” that focus on strength training. Most egregious of all, drug makers like Eli Lilly, manufacturers of weight-loss drug Mounjaro, are looking to cash in on the problem they’ve helped to create. They’re developing a drug to stop the muscle loss caused by their weight-loss drug. It doesn’t really get more blatant than that.

There is also the large percent of people for whom the drugs don’t work on, and the patients who need to stop taking them because of the severe side effect. Seventeen percent of patients stop taking the drugs due “gnarly gastrointestinal symptoms, such as nausea and vomiting... pancreatitis, severe gastrointestinal distress, low blood sugar, and even hair loss.” These are side effects that many people experience, for some it’s just so bad they need to discontinue the drug.

Another “…quarter to a third [of patients] are non-responders” according to Fatima Cody Stanford, an obesity medicine specialist at Harvard. That’s the same Dr. Stanford being quoted by The Atlantic as an “expert” who has received $75,000 from Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly, the makers of two of the most popular weight-loss drugs.

The articles around Ozempic and other GLP1 agonists are enough to give you whiplash. Just a few months ago every news outlet couldn’t help but write about the revolutionary new class of drugs, downplaying any potential side effects. But now with millions of people experiencing them first-hand they’ve made an about face.

My mother sent me a clip this week for a new weight-loss “pill.” The patient swallows a deflated balloon and once it’s in the stomach they inflate it, making less room for food. It stays in the stomach for four months and then passes through the bowels. I wonder what the future side effects of having a foreign object lodged in your stomach for a few months might be. I don’t know, and I wish no one had to find out.

I just can’t help but wonder what would happen if all the time and money that went into developing these quick fix weight loss methods with a goal of making money, instead went into fixing the real issues people are facing every day. If we invested in free child-care to relieve people of some money concerns. If we invested in better distribution and access to nutritious foods. If we made life just a little bit easier and more enjoyable for people so that they could sleep better at night.

More Insights From Why We Sleep

I’m slowly making my way through Matthew Walker’s Why We Sleep which continues to fascinate me. A few years ago, I learned about the importance of sleep, but reading about the benefits in detail and learning about the studies that identified the benefits has again changed my approach to sleep.

Part of that shift has included a huge reduction in caffeine intake. Mainly from coffee. There’s a chemical in your body called adenosine. Throughout the day more and more of it attaches to receptors in the brain building “sleep pressure” which causes you to feel tired and eventually fall asleep. Caffeine helps keep you awake by attaching itself to the adenosine receptors and effectively blocking adenosine from latching on.

Learning that piece of information I’ve gone from 2 - 4 coffees per day to 1 cup of tea, and the occasional small coffee (I’ve had 2 in the last week). We’ve been on a road trip all week, changing beds every few days, so it’s been difficult to tell what benefits I’ve been experiencing. But I can say for sure that I’ve been having more vivid dreams at night, and I feel less edgy during the day.

The other big change I’ve made is staying in bed longer. According to Matthew Walker’s research the last two hours of sleep, the hours many of us cut short to get the day started, prove to be the most important for memory and motor skill development.

I had been in a cycle of getting out of bed at close to 4 am every day, about 6 hours of being in bed. Now I try to give myself at least 8 hours in bed and get up at 6. The change has been enormous for me. I wake up with a clearer mind and I’ve had less mood swings throughout the day (another symptom of sleep deprivation).

I also found this quote from the book insightful. It’s the best description I’ve ever heard about developing habits. “Training and strengthening muscles can help you better execute a skilled memory routine. But the routine itself - the memory program - resides firmly and exclusively within the brain.” A habit is exactly that, “a skilled memory routine.” 

I found it interesting because it emphasizes the fact that any skill or habit you wish to acquire is nothing more than replaying a memorized choreography. Meaning to learn something new, you need to do it repeatedly. It’s something I learned in The Power of Habit and its akin to the 10,000 hour rule I first heard about in Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers. It reinforces the idea that if I just keep trying eventually, I’ll get better. It’s something I wrote about recently relating to skiing, and it was on display again this past week. 

We stayed a few nights in a small log cabin with a wood burning stove. Wood stoves are a love of mine, but building a fire is not something I get to do often. So, our first night it took me over an hour to get a fire going and I filled the house with enough noxious smoke to make Jen open the door in 20 degree weather.

But the next night it took only 30 minutes and generated minimal smoke in the house. On the third day we collected kindling during our walk along the river. That night I got the fire going on the first try and it burned seamlessly throughout the night. I was even able to get a fire going in the morning just using the remaining embers that were burning.

I was proud of myself and, never letting a moment go by without reflection, thought about how cool the progress I made in just 3 nights was. Note to self: keep going, don’t ever stop. Parrar e morrer. To stop is to die. 

Cheers.

James.