• Last year a couple of researchers wanted to see what percentage of adults in the US were metabolically healthy. They compiled and assessed the data. The result: 12.2% of American adults are metabolically healthy. While it's striking that 88% of people aren't metabolically healthy, what struck me even more is that the guidelines they used to define "metabolic health" - waist measurement, glucose, blood pressure, triglycerides and HDL - weren't even that strict. I could only imagine what the number would be if they included a fasted insulin parameter of under 5 mIU/mL.
  • There isn’t agreement on what is an ideal fasting insulin, but a study out of Arizona found that women with a fasting insulin around 8.0 had twice the risk of prediabetes as those with 5.0. And the average insulin level in the US is over 8. From the research I’ve done, I would say 2-5 is an ideal range.
  • It's hard to overstate the importance of this as metabolic dysfunction underlies nearly every single chronic disease from cardiovascular (#1 killer) to cancer (#2 killer) to dementia.

😴 What I'm spending 70 hours on this month:

• My dental license is up for renewal at the end of the year, which requires 50 hours of continuing education. So I enrolled in a 70-hour course on sleep, mostly focused around the airway and treating sleep disordered breathing. While this video is presented in the most monotone voice possible, it's a fantastic overview of SDB, what's really going on, and how important/serious of an issue it can be.

• This is a nice beginner chemistry lesson from the vantage point of hard vs soft water and what it can do to your coffee. It's also why if you take a shower with soft water it's hard to wash the soap off.

• In the 1960 advertisers realized that customers don't just buy the product. They don't buy the alarm system, they buy peace of mind. They don't buy the Mercedes, they buy status. A customer buys a need/desire and the product is simply the vehicle to deliver it.