- An Epidemic of Absence (book about allergies and autism)
- Professor of medicine who studies medical error loses a leg due to medical error. “Despite calls to action by patient advocates and the adoption of safety programs, there is no sign that the numbers of errors, injuries and deaths [due to errors] have improved.” Nothing about consequences for the person who made the error that caused him to lose a leg.
- Doubts about spending a huge amount of research money on a single project (brain mapping). Which has yet to produce even one useful result.
- Cancer diagnosis innovation by somebody without a job (a 15-year-old)
- Someone named Rob Rhinehart has greatly reduced the time and money he spends on food by drinking something he thinks contains all essential nutrients. Someone pointed out to him that he needs bacteria, which he doesn’t have. (No doubt several types of bacteria are best.) He doesn’t realize that Vitamin K has several forms. I suspect he’s getting too little omega-3. This reminds me of a man who greatly reduced how much he slept by sleeping 15 minutes every 3 hours. It didn’t work out well for him (his creativity vanished and he became bored and unhappy). In Rhinehart’s case, I can’t predict what will happen so it’s fascinating. When something goes wrong, however, I’ll be surprised if he can figure out what caused the problem.
Thanks to Amish Mukharji.
Seth, how could you omit Rhineheart’s sublime name for this substance — “soylent”. Because it *becomes* people, I suppose?
Best quote in article: “After a week advertisements for fast food looked repulsive. All I crave is Soylent.”
Fascinatingly, the conclusion he may be testing here is that Soylent is actually healthier than fast food? Sudden dystopian visions…
I’m sure Rhineheart’s experiment would make Michael Pollan roll his eyes.
In the book soylent, stood for soy + lentils.
Actually there are quite a few people who have dramatically reduced the amount of sleep they get & report positive results after a difficult adjustment period; google: “polyphasic sleep”.
Seth: I can’t find any examples where someone maintained it for a year or more. For a few weeks, sure. The Wikipedia article on the subject mentions Buckminister Fuller but I don’t trust him.
Steve Pavlina (1st page of Google results) claims he sustained it for about 5 months. There was another quite detailed account of a woman who sustained it for a long time, maybe a year? before her life situation forced her to go back to a siesta style sleep pattern (long sleep at night, nap in the afternoon).
Seth: to me, 5 months = unsustainable. You’d think that something that increased your free time by 100% would do better than that.
The Rhineheart link seems less like self-experimentation and more like marketing. He explores the positive effects in detail but glosses over the negative effects with oblique descriptors.
Seth: You might have something there. However, I don’t know what he’s marketing. What is he glossing over? I didn’t notice that.
This guy slept polyphasically for over a year:
https://akshatrathi.wordpress.com/2010/05/30/my-tryst-with-polyphasic-sleeping/
I only managed 4 weeks before it caught up with me.
I think overall that melatonin is too important to mess around with, regardless of whether reduced sleep schedules are feasible.
Rhineheart really doesn’t know what he is doing. He hasn’t taken into account nutrient interactions affecting bioavailability either.
He’s bothering with adding things like ginkgo biloba whilst ignoring choline, creatine, MCTs etc.