Personal Science Week - 240808 Sleep

Results of new sleep experiments, plus new tests to consider

Nothing beats a good nights sleep, and studying what works is a favorite personal science experiment.

I recently tested two new treatments, OverAchieve™ and Prodrome Glia™ to see if they can improve my sleep.

We’re long-time fans of the sleep app, SleepSpace, and its founder Dan Gartenberg, Ph.D., who knows more about sleep than anyone I know. (See PSWeek230209 for our previous experiments with the app). So when they asked for volunteers to try a new dietary supplement drink, I signed up immediately.

OverAchieve™ Sleep is a proprietary blend of ingredients including melatonin, velarian root, ashwagandha, and more, packed in special “bio-efficient vesicles” that supposedly guarantee the best bioavailability. What good is a sleep aid if stomach acids rip it apart before it can make it into your bloodstream? You drink a swig of Overachieve Sleep a few minutes before bedtime and let the zzzzz’s begin.

I found the drink version easier to take than a pill, but the requirement to swig just before sleeping was a little annoying. I usually brush my teeth well before bedtime, and although the drink doesn’t contain enamel-busting sugar, I’m not sure it’s a good idea to drink after brushing. The taste is fine—a little bit sweet and … with a smoothness like a very mild mouthwash. Just toss it down; if you don’t like horse pills, this is much better.

I don’t have any particularly serious sleep issues, though I’m always up for improvement. Although I usually fall asleep quickly, I tend to wake up in the middle of the night, sometimes longer than I’d like. My sleep trackers say I don’t get enough deep sleep, so it would be nice to improve that as well.

My experiment included only 6 drinks: three nights in a row, then three nights off, and finally three more nights. I used my trusty Apple Watch, and of course the SleepSpace app to measure my sleep.

Before I tell you my results, remember that this was a very short experiment. The SleepSpace people will need to aggregate results from dozens more people to give any meaningful results, so don’t consider my example to be representative.

Meanwhile, a week after finishing this experiment I happened to start another one involving a special supplement “designed to nourish all the structural support cells in your body such as the oligodendrocytes and Schwann cells that build and maintain the protective coatings on your neurons”. Back in PSWeek240111 I wrote about my experience with Prodrome Sciences’ ProdromeScan™, a $300 blood test that its creator argues can identify important hallmarks of dementia and other neurological conditions. ProdromeGlia™ is one of Prodrome Science’s supplements intended to strengthen and repair the cells responsible.

The pills aren’t cheap—about $100 for a bottle of 60. You’re supposed to take 2 / day, but they recommend 4-8/day when you’re ramping up. So for one week I took 8/day.

Results

Here is the summary of the sleep data comparing different treatments (No Treatment, OverAchieve, and ProdromeGlia™):

Observations

1. Awake Time: Awake time is significantly lower with ProdromeGlia compared to other treatments.

2. Total Sleep Time: Total sleep time is highest with ProdromeGlia.

3. Quality Sleep: Quality sleep is highest with ProdromeGlia.

4. Deep Sleep: Deep sleep is noticeably higher with ProdromeGlia. A quick T-test shows that this result is the only one large enough to be statistically significant.

Conclusion

Based on this data, the ProdromeGlia supplement appears to have the most positive impact on sleep metrics, with the highest total sleep time, quality sleep, and deep sleep, and the lowest awake time.

More Tests to Consider

• A friend recommended Mito Health, a $400 100-biomarker and health testing startup. I tried the the similar-sounding $500 Function Health we mentioned back in PSWeek240711, and I’ll post my writeup soon.

• A new $800 Alzheimers test? A study of more than 1,200 patients with signs of the disease found the Precivity AD2 blood test, which measures ratios of the proteins tau and amyloid-beta, detected the disease more often than doctors did.

• Skin-checking apps are an active area of development for a number of reasons explained here. There are many AI-powered apps to check for suspicious lesions or a wider range of skin conditions, including Miiskin, Cube, SkinVision, aysa or Skinive.

As always, if you try any of these tests, or if you have other new ones you’ve learned about, let us know.

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