Light:

• Ok, more news on light. First, it appears that on a sub cellular level, blue light is toxic to retinal cells. This storyattempts to translate the original article from Nature. The study used cell cultures, and applied “445–594 nm laser light depending on the experiment” to the cells. Tough to necessarily translate to real life. But you can always fall back on the question of what is natural. Sunlight in the middle of the day is natural. Smartphones in bed are not. 
• Another cool article about circadian lighting is this one with a great title. The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia is using circadian lighting in one of their transplant units. Circadian lighting has been studied in nursing homes, in the very young, and again simply makes sense. Benefits to patients are assumed, but they hardly mention the huge benefits to the healthcare workers. I couldn’t find a cost description, but LED lighting is getting more and more affordable. LED bulbs that change light temperature are quite reasonable for the home. 

Work(out):

• We all spend a lot of time sitting at work, and of course we know it is unhealthy. But what do we do about it? One option that gets me less and less weird looks is the work squat. While working at the computer in my office, while sitting in Room 9 Trauma room waiting on a patient to arrive, while waiting for your food to heat up, in the middle of lecture. We even conducted rounds once all in a full squat – couldn’t rise until rounds ended! Sadly we took no photos.
• As soon as no one is looking today, drop down into a squat for a couple minutes. Or if they are looking, get them to join you!

Good bugs:

• Another reason now to eat yogurt, kefir, kimchi, sauerkraut, real pickles, kombucha. Probiotic supplementation in this study led to improvement in skeletal health, with half of the bone loss usually occurring with aging. The bacteria used, Lactobacillus reuteri 6475, has been linked to many health benefits. So after grandma does her deadlifts, she should have a yogurt smoothie. 

Return on Investment:

• Check out this articlefrom a site called BioRxiv. This is apparently not peer-reviewed. Not sure why this author did not publish this in a major journal. He looked at research funding at major institutions and found several things. First, half of NIH grant dollars go to 2% of institutions. 3/4 of applicants are denied funding each year.
• This might be justified if the major institutions were more “productive,” which is usually measured in publications. BUT less-prestigiousinstitutions produced more scientific publications per dollar of research than did prestigious (65% more productive [8.7 vs 5.3 publications per million dollars]). They even looked at relative citation ratio (RCR) to determine the impact of these publications, to see if big-leaguers have more quality but less quantity. Nope. All but one of the less-prestigious institutions outperformedthe prestigious ones, with 35% higher productivity. 
• Prior research has shown a breakpoint at about $400k, with marginal returns for the investigators at $400k being 5 times greater than for those with $1 million. 
• If you got bored above, in a nutshell, research funding illustrates the law of diminishing returns, and calls into question the allocation of NIH funding to researchers. Follow the link to the free full text article. 

Fantasyland:

• Reading this book Fantasylandby Kurt Anderson. At 440 pages and spanning 500 years, it is a beast. The underlying theme is that America has always been a place that allowed for belief in fads, mass movements, fantasies. “What I believe is true because I want and feel it to be true.” 
• His coverage of the California Gold Rush (inflection point in US History) is fascinating. Actually, the first settlers in Virginia were rushing for gold as well, not like the Puritans up north. The author is building up to an explanation of the current political “situation.” When talking about the Big Bang of the 60s and 70s, he says “what the left and right respectively love and hate are mostly flip sides of the same coins minted around 1967.” 
• For anyone looking for a very funny, fast paced, loaded with information, book about our great country, check it out. I’ll cover how it ends in a future newsletter. 

Quote:

“Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.”
– Stephen Covey