SLEEP + DEATH: According to new research optimal sleep helps you live longer – lowering mortality risk by almost 40 percent. As investigator Harvard investigator Joon Chung put it: "if sleep were an eight-hour pill, it would be beneficial to take the full dose at regular times consistently.” Researchers pulled data from the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis Sleep Study, tracking 1,759 adults for seven years. According to seven days of measurements gathered by a wrist actigraph (an instrument that measures light and activity), the sleepers were divided into two groups a: "regular-optimal" or "irregular-insufficient". During a seven-year followup period, 176 people died. After adjustments, the regular-optimal group had a 39 percent lower mortality risk than the irregular-insufficient group. The research abstract was published in the journal Sleep.
Hotflash inc good start: My perimenopause power pairing of 15 minutes of morning light and stretching at night.
MUSCLE, FAT + COGNITIVE DECLINE: Muscle fat may be a new risk factor for cognitive decline as we age. In a new study published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, researchers assessed cognitive function in 1,600 adults in their 70s over 10 years. They found an association between greater cognitive decline and increases in muscle “adiposity” from the first to the 6th year, independent of weight, muscle mass and strength and any other dementia risk factor. Findings were similar between men and women, Black people and white. Investigators assessed muscle fat in over 1,600 biracial men and women in their 70s – via the Health, Aging and Body Composition (Health ABC) study – and evaluated their cognitive function over a 10-year period. They found that increases in muscle adiposity from year 1 to year 6 were associated with greater cognitive decline over time, independent of total weight, other fat deposits, strength, muscle mass muscle characteristics, and dementia risk factors.
Hotflash inc good start: Eat real food, protein with every meal and resistance training 3x a week.
Thing I’m sad about
Jeannie Linders, who wrote the global phenomenon “Menopause the Musical”, died on May 26.
Linders, who worked in advertising, put the show together by writing new lyrics for some of the most popular songs of her time. When no one was interested in funding it, she put on her first production in an old perfume shop in Orlando.
It went on to become the longest-running scripted musical in Las Vegas history, seen by 17 million people in 16 countries. And it continues with Menopause The Musical 2: Cruising Through Menopause, now making its way around the world.
In 2021, when I realized that it was the 30th anniversary, I tried to get Jeannie as one of the first guests on my podcast. She was game and although we wrote back and forth about it, she was dealing with health problems and it never ended up happening.
If you’ve seen the show – as I did when it was made available online in 2021 – you know it’s no Hamilton. As a New York Times reviewer put it 15 years ago, “Ms Linders is not a gifted lyricist”.
But it was never about theatre, something Linders was the first to admit. Instead it was similar to what is going on right now: a generation of women going through something and feeling seen in a way they never had before.
As she told a radio show, audiences were full of women able to say “that’s me. That’s me up there.”
Linders was as shocked as anyone by the show’s success, telling a New Jersey paper in 2009: "When I started writing, I was already 49 and had no retirement plan. I was down to producing street festivals, and was thinking of moving to Mexico to save money. Now instead I'm traveling to other countries to see the show. Did you know that the Germans don't refer to 'hot flashes,' but call them 'hot flushes?'
She went on to do many other things, including running a theatrical company, launching a magazine, raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for ovarian cancer research and education and launching the Jeanie C. Linders Fund, funding women’s community groups around the world.
What made her do it in the first place? She saw another musical that did the same thing, and three years later, went for it.
“It was a voice telling you to do it type of thing,” she said.
Legendary.
Celebrities are just like us
“I have hung up the 45 minutes of cardio, the aggressive CrossFits. That didn't, for me, work.”
Jennifer Aniston, who has partnered with Pvolve, to People
Trend worth talking about
The Messenger: What’s A Menopause Novel? A Look Inside A Growing Trend Whoopi Goldberg and Others Are Jumping On
Due to my location, I haven’t been able to watch the new Davina McCall-led documentary The Pill Revolution. And I’ve been trying not to read the commentary about it until I can, although I do know Britain’s Channel 4 did a survey of 4,000 women for the production, and 77 per cent reported side effects. In the meantime I talked about my own experience this week for paid subscribers (The Pill: Not a Love Story) and have Holly Grigg-Spall on the Hotflash inc podcast this weekend.
Holly is a journalist and author of the 2013 book Sweetening the Pill, on which last year’s controversial (and recommended by me) documentary The Business of Birth Control is based.
Editor’s note
RIP Jeannie Linders.
I’m announcing something very cool this week. Stay tuned.
Speaking of Pvolve, I’ve been intrigued by this workout for ages and nearly got into it during the pandemic but went with a mini-trampoline instead. Also all that equipment freaked me out.
I want to get rid of everything.
THANK YOU! :)
Great stuff here, as always! Appreciate what you do :)