2026
- Sleep · Evidence4 min read
The sleep science honored last night took 28 years. The sleep hack took a video.
Last night in New York the Lasker Foundation presented its basic-research award, often called America's Nobel, to Emmanuel Mignot of Stanford and Masashi Yanagisawa of the University of Tsukuba for identifying orexin, the brain peptide that keeps us awake.
- Sleep · Evidence5 min read
More REM, less disease: a 95,559-person study, and why your ring's REM number is still not this
A study published today inPLOS Medicine is the largest look yet at sleep stages and disease. Researchers in Beijing took seven days of wrist-accelerometer data from 95,559 UK Biobank participants, estimated REM, deep sleep, wakefulness and irregularity with a machine-learning model…
- Sleep · Clinical4 min read
GLP-1 drugs help sleep apnea. The machine still beats them, and most people won't wear it.
A review published today in JAMA Otolaryngology–Head & Neck Surgery does the sorting that sleep-apnea patients have needed since tirzepatide was approved for the condition in December 2024.
- Psychology of Optimization · Evidence4 min read
A scientist ran a longevity study on one person: himself. Read the limitations section first.
A university in Singapore announced today that one of its professors had, in a study published yesterday in PLOS ONE, reduced his estimated biological age from 47 to about 32.
- Sleep · Evidence4 min read
A sleep drug was approved today on trial data. Note what the sleep aisle has never had to show.
The FDA approved oveporexton today, the first drug that works by switching on the brain's orexin system — the wakefulness signal that is missing in people with narcolepsy type 1, a condition affecting an estimated 120,000 Americans.
- Sleep · Evidence4 min read
Too little sleep and too much both age every organ system. The sweet spot is boring.
A paper in Nature today, described by Columbia University, takes the biological-age idea the consumer industry sells one number at a time and runs it properly: 23 aging clocks built from brain and body imaging, blood proteins and metabolites, spanning 17 organ systems, in UK Biobank…
- Follow the Money4 min read
Investors just paid about $4,000 per wrist for a $199-a-year band. Read the arithmetic.
WHOOP, the fitness-band company that received an FDA warning letter over a blood-pressure feature last July, has raised $575 million at a valuation of $10.1 billion, led by Collaborative Fund.
- Sleep · Evidence3 min read
If you want to know whether one hour of sleep matters, look at Monday
Clocks moved forward at 2 a.m. this morning and most of the country lost an hour of sleep at once. You cannot run a randomized trial that takes an hour of sleep from three hundred million people, but twice a year a government does it for free, and researchers have been reading the…
- Evidence · The Fundamentals5 min read
Two papers in a week priced the fundamentals in years. Here is the receipt.
Two large studies from a University of Sydney team landed this week, and together they are the closest thing we have to a price list for the fundamentals.
2025
- Sleep · Evidence4 min read
Melatonin, heart failure, and the number the headline won't give you
The American Heart Association released a study today that will be summarized tomorrow as "melatonin linked to heart failure," and the summary will be both accurate and misleading.
- Sleep · The Subtraction3 min read
You got an hour back at 2 a.m. this morning. Here is the only sleep product that has ever worked.
Clocks fell back an hour at 2 a.m. this morning, and most of the country got the one sleep intervention with no subscription, no sensor and no side effects: more time in bed.
- Follow the Money4 min read
The ring is now worth $11 billion and sells blood tests. We said this would happen.
Oura, the Finnish smart-ring maker, announced today a $900 million round led by Fidelity at a valuation of about $11 billion — roughly double where it raised ten months ago.
- Sleep · Evidence3 min read
Mouth taping got its review: ten studies, 213 people and a warning
Taping your mouth shut at night is a social-media sleep hack with millions of views and, as of today, a systematic review in PLOS ONE. Ear, nose and throat researchers at Western University in Ontario found ten studies with a combined 213 patients.
- Sleep3 min read
The hour you lost this morning, and where it comes from
At 2 a.m. this morning, most of the United States moved its clocks forward an hour. Nobody slept it. The hour was taken from the night, by statute, from roughly 330 million people at once, and tomorrow morning is the one day a year the entire country wakes up jet-lagged in the same direction.
2024
- Follow the Money4 min read
A ring is worth $5.2 billion. The thing it measures is free.
Oura, the Finnish company behind the smart ring, announced today that it has closed a $200 million Series D at a $5.2 billion valuation, with Fidelity and the glucose-sensor maker Dexcom participating.
- Psychology4 min read
Oxford's word of the year is "brain rot." Longevity content is the premium tier.
Oxford University Press named "brain rot" its Word of the Year today, after a public vote of more than 37,000 people. Oxford's definition: the supposed deterioration of a person's mental state from overconsuming trivial content, now particularly online.
- Sleep4 min read
The free hour: the only sleep gift the calendar gives you
At 2 a.m. this morning, clocks in most of the United States went back an hour. For one night the country received the thing the longevity industry cannot sell: an extra hour of sleep, free, no device required.