Mitigate the effects of poor sleep?
Hi, I had another question I was curious about, what is Peter’s recommendation if you know that you’re going to have a night of poor sleep and there’s no avoiding that (e.g. planned shift work), i.e. how can you mitigate the negative health effects of that? Fasting, exercise, supplements?
Atherosclerosis
Hypothesis: The majority of atherosclerosis is not caused by disease; it is mostly caused by the physical characteristics of excess salt and/or sugar in the blood. Here are some questions that has led me to my hypothesis. Why does the increase of sugar and salt in the blood require its own emergency system (insulin for sugar and thirst for salt) to remove or dilute it before it can wreak havoc on the blood vessels? Science can use the analogy of plumbing to explain increased blood pressure with the narrowing of pipes due to the decreased diameter with vasoconstriction, why can't the analogy continue and be used to describe the damage caused by rock/gavel/crystals in the pipes? Sugar and Salt What started me down this path was a comedian that commented that “Salt was the only rock that tastes good.” I would argue that sugar crystals have similar physical characteristics. I am a therapist that has some clients that work on oil pipelines. They talk about how the sand in the oil damages the pipe from the inside out. I believe I remember from your podcast that you could tell how much blood vessel damage a person had by doing a calcium scan. Calcium accumulation is one of the characteristics of hardening of the arteries. Human babies develop the patella as a reaction from the pressure on the knee joint for protection. Hardening of the arteries is just the body's repair response to being sandblasted with sugar and salt crystals. Sugar and salt are crucial to life and yet extremely dangerous in the wrong concentrations, dose, and duration. Sugar How does the healthcare industry determine a patient’s sugar intake? As you know, (whether it is a good indication or not), A1C is how many sugar-coated RBC you have vs non-sugar-coated RBCs. I picture the RBCs as unglazed donuts vs spikey donuts of death tearing up blood vessels. There are videos of RBCs going single file through capillaries and the addition of sugar crystal spikes cannot be good. Evolutionarily, humans only had access to high levels of sugar during the fall and when they were brave enough to attack a beehive which limited the damage. Now we have year-round access. Salt Since salt does not bind to the RBCs, the osmolarity of the salt in the blood is the issue. The increase in salt increases the concentration gradient in the blood and cells. The initial damage occurs to the cells when the salt concentration in the cell gets too high because of osmolarity. I believe there is a secondary injury to blood vessels with high salt concentration. My thought is just basic chemistry. A solution (blood) gets super saturated with increased solute (salt) and the solute precipitates. The body triggers thirst to increase the amount of solution to decrease the amount of precipitate. Once the salt falls out of the solution, the salt causes damage like gravel in the pipes. When oil pipeline workers get crude oil with a high sand content, they increase the pressure of the pipeline to decrease the damage to the pipes from the sand. This may explain why blood pressure increases due to increased salt intake. Cholesterol I seem to remember that on your program, someone reported that new research was decreasing the causation link with high levels of cholesterol and heart disease. Just as science has found out that plaque is not the cause of Alzheimer’s, I believe that science will also find out that cholesterol is not the cause of atherosclerosis. Cholesterol contains the building blocks to repair the damage caused by the physical characteristics of an excess of sugar and salt in the blood. I would compare blood cholesterol to the green slime I put in my bicycle tires to keep them from leaking. There are probably interferons that release some chemicals at the site of the inflammation and damage caused by the crystals in the blood breaking down the blood vessel’s walls. When the damage gets too bad, and too much green slime accumulates, the pipes get blocked. There is cholesterol in the blood for a reason and that reason is for repair. Summation Sugar produces spiky donuts of death. Salt precipitates out of the solution of blood and acts like gravel in the pipes. Cholesterol is the green slime repairing the pipes and blocks the pipes when there is too much damage. Testing the viscosity (co-efficient of friction of a liquid) of the blood might be a better test than checking the cholesterol levels. Calcification happens to skeletal muscles after years of overwork and damage. Why would the smooth muscles of the blood vessels be any different? As an engineer and doctor, I think you might really like this. Please tell me where I go wrong.
Unisom
Dear Peter, I am an acute care surgeon who works night shifts about 6 times per month. I still enjoy surgery as my schedule allows for a couple weeks off a month to refresh. However I don’t like the sleepless nights. I have tried the Ambien and Lunesta routes. For various reasons these are not good options. I recently listened to your discussion on your sleep molecules. I was inspired enough to become a subscriber.
Strontium and bone density and bone strength
If strontium can replace a portion of calcium in bones, will that reduce fracture risk? Substituting calcium ions with heavier strontium ions will result in heavier bones. Heavier bones should mean higher bone density (grams/sq. cm). But the atomic bone density (atoms/sq. cm) should stay the same. As a comparison if my calcium is the Ca46 isotope rather than Ca40 my bone density should increase but it wouldn’t reasonably result in reduced fracture risk. Thanks!