I find the work Dr. Ali Crum publishes on the placebo effect, mindsets, individual performance, and psychological well-being rather interesting. And a comment she made about her work very reassuring.

There have been times, you see, when I’ve felt conflicted about using personal preference to generate columns. But on a podcast with Dr. Andrew Huberman, Crum admits that everything she studies professionally has come from her own experiences or failings.

That for her, “research is me search.”

While her research is done exclusively in a laboratory and mine primarily on the internet, the reasons for it are the same. So Crum’s admission comforts me.

It also leads me to believe that as long as I err on the side of caution and only publish “me search” that’s sure to interest you, the way in which I select my topics - because of the fervor I have for them - is a good thing.

Why are you being informed of this? Because that err-on-the-side-of-caution stipulation caused me recently to junk an article about the “handsome recompense” of intense exercise, so handsome it’s called the “ultimate elixir” in the title.

To help prove both of those claims, the abandoned article cited a question-and-answer session with readers of his bestselling book, Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity (Harmony, 2023), where Dr. Peter Attia was asked, “What’s the best thing you can do for longevity?”

“Taking your exercise to a 10 out of 10,” Attia said, “is going to have a greater impact on both the length and quality of your life than [anything else].”

While Attia’s words are truthful, they can be a turnoff. Many people lack the desire to go all out when they exercise.

But who doesn’t desire restful and restorative sleep - or get turned on from getting enough of it?

Because when you do get enough sleep, you function far better. According to the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, you find it easier to stay at a healthy weight and handle stress; get sick less often and lower your risk for serious health problems like diabetes and heart disease; improve your mood, in large part because you think more clearly, which leads to making good decisions and being more tolerant.

You’re also more likely to avoid work-related injuries and car accidents.

While all this is well and good, a 2016 survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found only 1 in 3 adult Americans get an adequate amount of sleep on a regular basis. But don’t confuse getting an adequate amount of sleep with getting an optimal amount.

To know what’s optimal for you, use the easy indicator that I faithfully follow, one that Joe Friel, an endurance sports coach who has also written 11 sports-performance books, also suggests. That if you don’t wake up naturally a few minutes ahead of your alarm in the morning, you didn’t get an optimal amount of sleep that night.

Now we can only guess at the results if those involved in the 2016 CDC sleep survey had been asked about this, but supposing no more than 1 in 6 American adults who set an alarm clock each night get up before it goes off seems to be a safe bet.

Which would mean 5 out 6 American adults don’t find all those aforementioned benefits from sleep enough of an enticement to go to bed earlier or begin their day later. And that you are probably one of the 5 out of 6.

So let’s use a few gloom-and-doom articles found at the American Academy of Sleep Medicine website to engage in a bit of negativity bias - what a 2008 review in Psychological Bulletin defines as our tendency to “learn from and use negative information far more than positive information” - to incentivize you.

Did you know, for instance, that just a single night of short sleep causes cells to age quicker than if you get the seven hours per night the AASM recommends? In other words, you can add accelerated wrinkling, age spots, and bags under the eyes to the surfeit of insufficient sleep sorrows.

Another results from something you’re sure to know about weight gain. That it’s more likely to occur with an increase in appetite or when you eat a seemingly sufficient amount yet don’t feel full.

But you may not know ghrelin is the hormone that stimulates hormone and GLP-1 is one of the hormones that makes you feel full or that research published in 2012 found that short-changing sleep adversely affects the former in males and the latter in females. Since then, related studies have yielded similar findings, strong enough so that a lack of sleep is now viewed as one of the primary reasons for overeating.

Moreover, multiple studies have linked a lack of Z’s with an increased likelihood of becoming obese and developing type two diabetes - as well as suffering heart disease and contracting certain cancers.