Thanks for letting us interview you, Dr. O’Brien. Would you mind introducing yourself to our audience—where do you work, what do you do? I’m Louise O’Brien, an Associate Professor at the Division of Sleep Medicine, Department of Neurology, at the University of Michigan. My work focuses mostly on sleep disruption in pregnant women and its […]
Book of The Month (February)
Sync by Steven Strogatz For our second book of the month, we picked Sync: How Order Emerges from Chaos In the Universe, Nature, and Daily Life, by Steven Strogatz. This might seems like a bit of an oddball choice for a company that’s working on consumer apps in the health space. Why pick a math […]
Biophysics for Better Living 2.0
In my last blog post, I talked about the power and potential for biophysics engines to contribute to clinical care and ragged on my own ability to play video games. The short version of it, if you don’t have time to circle back: If you’re going to make a digital twin of somebody, base it […]
Biophysics for Better Living
One of the highest stakes moments of my life was the time in graduate school when I was (badly) playing Donkey Kong at Pinball Pete’s Arcade, and a very, very good Donkey Kong player came over to watch me play in silence. I’d just spent six dollars worth in quarters dying repeatedly on the first […]
Naps, part one.
The first thing I want to say about naps is that I’m almost always for them. Naps can help you recover from sleep deprivation. Naps are good. But let’s talk about that almost always. When might you want to avoid napping? Well, maybe you’re trying to shift your personal time zone and are at a […]
Book of the Month (January)
The Circadian Code by Satchin Panda In keeping with the theme of new beginnings, this January we introduced a book of the month. Join us as we work our way through books that highlight the importance of circadian and sleep health 😴 Up first: The Circadian Code by Satchin Panda of the Salk Institute for […]
Interview with Dr. Cathy Goldstein
We sat down to talk with Dr. Goldstein on what she sees as the future of wearables in the sleep clinic. Enjoy! Thank you for taking the time to meet with me today! Could you take a minute to introduce yourself and say a little about what your job is? Cathy Goldstein, MD. I’m a […]
Tis the Season: Seasonal Effects and Circadian Rhythms
As today is the shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere (and the longest in the Southern Hemisphere), it seems appropriate to talk about how the seasons change our bodies’ rhythms. Many things change with the seasons, but the main seasonal variation that I will consider here is the variation in day length. […]
Take a Break (From Social Jet Lag)
Why do you go to sleep when you do? Sure, there’s a big part of it that’s physical: You go to sleep because you’re sleepy. But you might also stay awake, even when you’re on the verge of collapsing from fatigue because you have work to get done. Or because your neighbor is practicing a […]
We Rate Sleep Memes
Meme #1 Here we see Squidward staying up and reading instead of going to sleep. Squidward himself might smugly point out that he’s reading a book, not looking at a light-emitting screen, and use that as an excuse to feel superior. If so, he would be tragically mistaken. There are clearly lights on in the […]