Saturday 7

Published: Sat, 12/27/25

Updated: Thu, 01/01/26

Good morning!

Here's your Saturday 7 roundup!

🧀 What is brain food:

A new study found that eating high-fat cheese was linked to lower dementia risk. (r)

One potential reason why is that dairy fat contains bioactive phospholipids which support cell membranes and myelin.

Dairy exists to fuel rapid growth, especially the brain, so it kind of makes sense.

Theme of the next decade(s):

What they told you was bad for you is actually good for you.

🦷 What's told by your teeth:

Plaque in the brain: Alzheimer's.
Plaque in the arteries: Heart Disease
Plaque in the mouth: Periodontal Disease

Poor diet drives oral dysbiosis, allowing pathogens like P. gingivalis to proliferate and cause gum disease.

These oral-specific bacteria are also found in brain and heart plaques.

The mouth is often the first alarm when your diet is off.

And that's the theme of the book I'm working on.

Your teeth tell you what to eat.

Hint: it's a lot of meat.

✍️ How the 2025 Challenge went:

I've been doing an Annual Challenge for nearly 15 years.

My 2025 Challenge was to write The Human Diet.

I didn't expect to finish it, but I'd hoped to be further along. I've written about 100 pages, getting close to finishing Part 1 (of 3).

You can read most of Part 1 right now, and you can get a good overview of Part 2, in this keynote.

What Your Teeth Say You Should Eat | Dr. Kevin Stock, DDS

Next year, I'll be writing Part 2, and the third and final part will likely take me into 2027.

💡 How to get back on track:

In reviewing my 2025 writing, I give myself an A+ for the first 6 months, but a C- during the second half.

What happened? Did I lose motivation?

Not really. I realized halfway through the year my priorities switched. SnoreBuds was getting close to launching. And the way my brain works is that it needs to focus on the highest priority thing first.

The Problem

But my schedule was to write first thing in the morning. This conflict in priorities caused me to cut writing sessions short, be distracted when trying to write and thereby block "flow state," and slowly eroded consistency.

The Solution

One writing strategy I used during the summer was to have a dedicated "Writing Day." It was effective. Deep work requires singular focus.

Those days, while grueling, routinely resulted in 4-5 pages. Multiply that over 52 weeks and I could make a big dent toward finishing the book.

So that's my writing plan in 2026. Schedule a dedicated writing day 1X/week so I can focus on SnoreBuds the rest of the time. Once daily SnoreBuds' priorities are done, I can do light editing and ongoing research on the other days.

P.S.

I'm also gearing up for my new 2026 Challenge. It's unlike anything I've attempted before. More details next week...

🧠 What quote I've been thinking about:

"As you start to walk on the way, the way appears."

– Rumi

🐦‍🔥 What's going to rise like a phoenix:

My 2019 Challenge was to learn to draw.

The last few years I've found a groove doing one main drawing a year.

I've also found a groove in doing bitcoin drawings. I spend maybe 1-2 hours a month with a pencil in hand while listening to financial podcasts.

The collection is growing!

✒️ Why I'm (still) not signing off:

I remember last year at this time I was thinking of signing off.

It had been 7 years of writing the Saturday 7 newsletter. Not a single miss. The 7 insights at 7 a.m. in a 7 minute read had been sent out over 7 million times. I thought it was poetic perfection.

I wondered if the ~~stars~~ 7's aligning were a sign to sign off.

But I received an outpouring of emails telling me to ignore the signs and just do another 7 years 😂

Well one more year down! Another 2+ million emails.

And hopefully a few learnings, a few laughs :)

I'm looking forward to another great year with you in 2026!

Thank you!

Kevin

P.S.

2025 word of the year.

Hint: it's a 4-letter word.