Saturday 7

Published: Sat, 04/25/26

Updated: Tue, 04/28/26

Good morning!

Here's your Saturday 7 roundup!

🫁 Can you make it to 5:

How many spins can you last?

1 – You’re cooked

2 – Mouth breather

3 – Mixed breather

4 – Baseline

5 – Nasal breather

6 – Athletic breather

7 – Calm nervous system

8 – High CO2 tolerance

9 – Trained

10 – Cheating

🤐 How to fix your numbers:

Your breath hold ability is a reflection for how you breathe all day.

Low score = you're over-breathing, likely through your mouth, with shallow chest breaths. This drives down CO₂ tolerance, reduces oxygen delivery (Bohr effect), cranks up anxiety and sympathetic tone, and worsens your sleep breathing.

High score = you're a nasal, diaphragmatic breather with strong CO₂ tolerance. You have better oxygen use, a calmer nervous system, and a more powerful aerobic engine.

Solution:

-Lips sealed

-Tongue on the roof of your mouth

-Breathe through your nose

Fix your oral posture → fix your breathing → fix your (oral) health.

P.S.

I built the SnoreSealer to help you hold proper oral posture while you sleep because most people can't do it consciously at 2am (unless and until trained). And it's much better than mouth tape.

😴 How (else) to breathe better:

I got obsessed with breathing in dental school.

It's what led me to starting a Dental Sleep Medicine practice. When I graduated I exclusively treated patients' snoring and obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) with oral devices, appliances that mechanically open the airway.

But, per usual, I was always looking for a root cause...

I knew that low CO₂ tolerance causes the body to breathe too fast and too much. That creates an unstable breathing pattern, one that makes the airway more likely to vibrate and collapse, resulting in snoring and OSA.

Nasal breathing was key. Nasal dilators helped by opening constrictions and preventing nasal valve collapse. But alone, they weren't enough.

So, I had an idea.

What if I combined a nasal dilator with EPAP (expiratory positive airway pressure)?

The dilator would open the nasal passage. The EPAP would add a small resistance on the exhale, creating positive pressure that helps keep the airway from collapsing.

EPAP also naturally slows the exhale and retains slightly more CO₂, which stabilizes breathing and gradually builds tolerance over time.

Think of it this way: the dilator keeps you driving on the right side of the road. The EPAP keeps you driving the speed limit.

I patented that idea a few years ago.

But during development, I noticed something.

Some people needed more resistance. Some needed less. A single EPAP strength wasn't going to work for everyone.

So I filed a second patent for a variable resistance EPAP mechanism. A dial that lets you set the resistance to your personal need — The Snore Strength Dial.

This patent just came in!

The "Snore Strength Dial" has been a big engineering challenge, but I think it's one of the biggest innovations.

The earliest EPAP device, Provent, only offered one strength: high.

That created two problems.

1 — Acclimating to EPAP can take time, and with no lower setting to start from, many people simply couldn't adapt.

2 — People with milder sleep-disordered breathing didn't need that much resistance to begin with.

The Snore Strength Dial solved both problems.

With SnoreBuds you can start slow and turn up the strength as needed and as you acclimate.

P.S.

A new SnoreBuds user discovered something this week worth sharing: putting a small amount of Vaseline on the outside of the device during the first week made the acclimation process more comfortable.

If you're in week one and have any soreness, give it a try, and let me know if it helps!

💡 How to re-write your story:

Alfred Nobel had over 300 patents, but was best known for his invention of dynamite.

He had explosives and armament factories all across Europe.

Then in 1888, Alfred's brother, Ludvig Nobel, died.

A French newspaper got the story wrong. They reported that it was Alfred who had died, and ran the headline: "The Merchant of Death is Dead."

Alfred read his own obituary.

He was mortified. Not by the error, but by what it revealed: this was how the world saw him. This was the legacy he was building.

Determined to change his legacy, he rewrote his will and established the Nobel Prizes. (r)

You may never get the chance to read your own obituary. But you can envision it, check it for regrets, and make changes now, so it reads like the life you want to have lived.

🧠 What cracked me up:

"Do crackheads ever say, “I’m too broke to smoke crack tonight”?

No. They get up and make it happen.

Lesson in there."

– Lynk, on excuses

📊 What is (actually) rare:

Bitcoin is a programmatically scarce commodity.

Generally, commodity prices self-correct: as prices rise, production increases. As supply catches up, prices correct.

Gold resists this cycle better than most. Supply grows slowly and consistently, which is why it's historically been considered "hard" money.

Bitcoin is harder. Its supply is fixed. No miner, government, or market can increase the supply in the face of rising prices.

Over long time horizons, the balancing forces of supply and demand always win.

So why is caviar still expensive, even though it's no longer rare?

🏆 Which names take the top spots:

For the first time since 1990, the US Census Bureau has released America's most popular names.

Based on 2020 Census data, Michael topped the list for men — climbing from No. 4 in 1990. (Checks out: a third of my immediate family is named Michael.)

For women, Mary held the top spot in both censuses.

See if your name made the list.

As always, it's an honor getting to spend some time with you.

Hope you have a great weekend!

Kevin

P.S.

Finally, a site that removes the tyranny of choice when picking movies.