3 ms·

All of those illnesses are tied with circadian desynchrony problems. If you screw with the clock gene in a mouse for example, or poke at the part of the hypotha

All of those illnesses are tied with circadian desynchrony problems. If you screw with the clock gene in a mouse for example, or poke at the part of the hypothalamus that controls sleep-wake cycles (the suprachiasmatic nucleus), those mice will die early of heart disease and cancer. Fun fact: one of the top genes associated with type-2 diabetes, for example, is the melatonin receptor! These are hardly confounds, but more end-points of diseases of aging, which can be accelerated when the bodies homeostatic control of anabolism and catabolism is broken. In short, there is much that remains to be done to find the associations between sleep architecture, aging, and human health outcomes. http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/119/11/1510.short http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/119/11/1510.short https://www.physiology.org/doi/abs/10.1152/ajpheart.1998.275.6.h2334 https://www.physiology.org/doi/abs/10.1152/ajpheart.1998.275... https://www.nature.com/articles/nrn1177 https://www.nature.com/articles/nrn1177

nerdponx 9y ago
Likely a circular effect. All of those things can be disruptive to sleep.
jwilliams 9y ago
All true and good stuff -- But I think the OP is pointing out that being a Night Owl is probably confounded (majorly) with a significant range of other health and lifestyle factors. This is always a major challenge in these types of studies. It's useful research - but it often ends up as a news headline "doing X is a factor in Death." Which is often misleading.
macawfish 9y ago
This is also why calcified pineal glands and fluoride poisoning may actually be a big deal. Sadly, not enough serious researchers want to consider pineal gland health. I even saw one researcher who published one paper advocating global fluoridation of community water supplies and another paper investigating problems associated with melatonin deficiency. But they didn't have any papers investigating the relationship between these. In case you are curious, fluorine ions have an affinity for highly mineral rich regions of the body, and easily precipitate calcium, which is why fluoride is used for calcifying teeth. The pineal gland is the only organ in the brain that is directly exposed to the bloodstream, and is a kind of mineral sink. Pineal calcification is epidemic in adults, but is not popularly considered a "disease." This organ is totally unappreciated by mainstream "science based" medical culture. The pineal gland is responsible for melatonin synthesis and harmonizing the circadian rhythm. It has cells that communicate with light receptive cells in the eye. Indeed, this organ evolved as a light sensitive organ. In many animals, the pineal body is still directly light sensitive. I have a very strong feeling that this important gland is being overlooked by the medical establishment, but that it will be impossible to ignore its importance in times to come. Here's a little experiment you can do in your kitchen. Take some egg shells. Boil them to sterilize them. Then crush them with a mortar into a fine powder. Mix them with vinegar (acetic acid) to create a calcium salt (calcium acetate). There will be bubbles as the acetate precipitates calcium. This powder substance is a calcium salt which can be added to fluoridated water to neutralize fluorine ions. The fluorine ions which will have a much stronger affinity for the calcium than the acetate. If someone is really good with chemistry, maybe they could figure out the exact amounts needed to needed to adsorb all of the fluorine from a liter of water!
- jimrandomh 9y ago
  This is an interesting hypothesis, but your presentation of it is off in a way that sets off my crackpot detector. If you can regenerate the components of the argument with citations to reputable sources, it may be worth re-presenting it somewhere with less editorializing. But any time you talk about water fluoridation, you have to be very careful not to accidentally import information from the web of schizophrenics-citing-schizophrenics that most discussion of that topic comes from, and also to credibly signal that you're being careful in that way.
  - macawfish 9y ago
    Okay, so I appreciate your willingness to take interest in the theory. That said, to be perfectly honest, I'm offended by your use of both the words "crackpot" and "schizophrenic". Essentially you're asking me to write a literature review in order not to be considered "a crackpot" or "schizophrenic". Schizophrenia and crack are both quite serious issues, so in the first place I'm annoyed that these are considered to be normal derogatory language for "rational" people to casually throw around. You're suggesting that my comment is full of "editorializing", but then you go ahead and demonstrate exactly the kind of dogmatic, biased language that charges me to write in this way to begin with. I know you probably didn't mean harm, but that is strong, derogatory language you're throwing around in the name of science. Why? If you're feeling open minded, check out the variety of articles here: http://fluoridealert.org/studytracker/ http://fluoridealert.org/studytracker/ There are 232 pages of studies to dig through. Some day I'd love to write a full article on the subject. But I have a feeling that no matter how scientific it was, there would be a crowd so skeptical as to be blind. Maybe that's cause their pineal glands are too far calcified ;p
  - macawfish 9y ago
    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18755628/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18755628/ Degree of pineal calcification (DOC) is associated with polysomnographic sleep measures in primary insomnia patients.
- subcosmos 9y ago
  Some minor points: - The pineal gland isn't the only organ in the brain directly sensitive to the bloodstream. The base of the hypothalamus, specifically at the arcuate nucleus, can sample blood-born hormones via the Hypophyseal portal system, which is the same permeabilized brain region responsible for the pineal glands' exposure to the bloodstream. - Its also the hypothalamus that senses light levels, via the suprachiasmatic nuclei located just above the optic nerves. Its those neurons that sense light levels via retinal photoganglion cells. The SCN maintains the clock but then signals the pineal on its own. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15193530 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15193530 I find the calcification hypothesis interesting. Certainly damage to the arcuate nucleus (gliosis) has been implicated in hypothalamic aging and obesity, and I contend that other forms of brain damage due to blood-born exposures are possible. It would be neat to try correlating water flouride levels to millions of fitbit accounts .... if only encouraging people to donate their data for science was easier....

nerdponx 9y ago

Likely a circular effect. All of those things can be disruptive to sleep.

jwilliams 9y ago

All true and good stuff -- But I think the OP is pointing out that being a Night Owl is probably confounded (majorly) with a significant range of other health and lifestyle factors. This is always a major challenge in these types of studies. It's useful research - but it often ends up as a news headline "doing X is a factor in Death." Which is often misleading.

macawfish 9y ago

This is also why calcified pineal glands and fluoride poisoning may actually be a big deal. Sadly, not enough serious researchers want to consider pineal gland health. I even saw one researcher who published one paper advocating global fluoridation of community water supplies and another paper investigating problems associated with melatonin deficiency. But they didn't have any papers investigating the relationship between these. In case you are curious, fluorine ions have an affinity for highly mineral rich regions of the body, and easily precipitate calcium, which is why fluoride is used for calcifying teeth. The pineal gland is the only organ in the brain that is directly exposed to the bloodstream, and is a kind of mineral sink. Pineal calcification is epidemic in adults, but is not popularly considered a "disease." This organ is totally unappreciated by mainstream "science based" medical culture. The pineal gland is responsible for melatonin synthesis and harmonizing the circadian rhythm. It has cells that communicate with light receptive cells in the eye. Indeed, this organ evolved as a light sensitive organ. In many animals, the pineal body is still directly light sensitive. I have a very strong feeling that this important gland is being overlooked by the medical establishment, but that it will be impossible to ignore its importance in times to come. Here's a little experiment you can do in your kitchen. Take some egg shells. Boil them to sterilize them. Then crush them with a mortar into a fine powder. Mix them with vinegar (acetic acid) to create a calcium salt (calcium acetate). There will be bubbles as the acetate precipitates calcium. This powder substance is a calcium salt which can be added to fluoridated water to neutralize fluorine ions. The fluorine ions which will have a much stronger affinity for the calcium than the acetate. If someone is really good with chemistry, maybe they could figure out the exact amounts needed to needed to adsorb all of the fluorine from a liter of water!

jimrandomh 9y ago
This is an interesting hypothesis, but your presentation of it is off in a way that sets off my crackpot detector. If you can regenerate the components of the argument with citations to reputable sources, it may be worth re-presenting it somewhere with less editorializing. But any time you talk about water fluoridation, you have to be very careful not to accidentally import information from the web of schizophrenics-citing-schizophrenics that most discussion of that topic comes from, and also to credibly signal that you're being careful in that way.
- macawfish 9y ago
  Okay, so I appreciate your willingness to take interest in the theory. That said, to be perfectly honest, I'm offended by your use of both the words "crackpot" and "schizophrenic". Essentially you're asking me to write a literature review in order not to be considered "a crackpot" or "schizophrenic". Schizophrenia and crack are both quite serious issues, so in the first place I'm annoyed that these are considered to be normal derogatory language for "rational" people to casually throw around. You're suggesting that my comment is full of "editorializing", but then you go ahead and demonstrate exactly the kind of dogmatic, biased language that charges me to write in this way to begin with. I know you probably didn't mean harm, but that is strong, derogatory language you're throwing around in the name of science. Why? If you're feeling open minded, check out the variety of articles here: http://fluoridealert.org/studytracker/ http://fluoridealert.org/studytracker/ There are 232 pages of studies to dig through. Some day I'd love to write a full article on the subject. But I have a feeling that no matter how scientific it was, there would be a crowd so skeptical as to be blind. Maybe that's cause their pineal glands are too far calcified ;p
- macawfish 9y ago
  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18755628/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18755628/ Degree of pineal calcification (DOC) is associated with polysomnographic sleep measures in primary insomnia patients.
subcosmos 9y ago
Some minor points: - The pineal gland isn't the only organ in the brain directly sensitive to the bloodstream. The base of the hypothalamus, specifically at the arcuate nucleus, can sample blood-born hormones via the Hypophyseal portal system, which is the same permeabilized brain region responsible for the pineal glands' exposure to the bloodstream. - Its also the hypothalamus that senses light levels, via the suprachiasmatic nuclei located just above the optic nerves. Its those neurons that sense light levels via retinal photoganglion cells. The SCN maintains the clock but then signals the pineal on its own. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15193530 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15193530 I find the calcification hypothesis interesting. Certainly damage to the arcuate nucleus (gliosis) has been implicated in hypothalamic aging and obesity, and I contend that other forms of brain damage due to blood-born exposures are possible. It would be neat to try correlating water flouride levels to millions of fitbit accounts .... if only encouraging people to donate their data for science was easier....