Nina's Notes #1
Nina's Notes #1
Sleep, SF to Decriminalize Psychedelics & an Intro to DeSci
Hi Everyone,
Nina here with the first edition of my weekly newsletter. The goal of this newsletter is to bring you into the world of longevity, psychedelic therapeutics, decentralized science & other interesting news.
This week:
💤 Sleep & Why we Age
🍄 San Francisco Decriminalizes Psychedelics
🎧 Deep Listening Event today for Wavepaths’ Launch
❓What is Decentralized Science?
📅 Events in Berlin
Longevity Topics
Sleep is your Superpower
One of the easiest healthspan lengthening tools we have is Sleep. In Matthew Walker’s book, Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams, he explains the benefits of sleep on memory, health, aging and cancer prevention, and shows that as a society we are chronically underslept. Dr. Walker summarizes his findings in his TEDTalk “Sleep is your Superpower.”
Sleep is essential in creating memories, processing information and learning skills. Every wonder why if you practice a skill over and over but keep messing up in the same place, then the next day after a good night’s rest, you can do it perfectly without error? It’s because both rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and nREM (non-REM sleep) are essential for the brain to integrate your learning.
Key takeaway: We should all be giving ourselves 8 hours of “sleep opportunity” (the time around when you actually fall asleep, when you are in bed with your eyes closed but not actually asleep) each night to ensure we are getting our required 7 hours of sleep for our brain to be at peak performance.
Increasing our healthspan
The ultimate guide to understanding longevity biology and improving healthspan is Dr. David Sinclair’s book, Lifespan: Why We Age - and Why We Don't Have To. Dr. Sinclair is a research professor at Harvard University and serial entrepreneur.
He studies a group of enzymes called Sirtuins that are activated by one of our key energy sources in our bodies, NAD+, read more on the science here. Dr. Sinclair found NAD+ levels decrease as we age, and identified supplements to raise these levels and effectively reverse signs of aging. Check out an interview with Dr. Sinclair here.
Psychedelic Therapeutic News
San Francisco Decriminalized Psychedelics
Big regulatory news and reason to celebrate the drug policy efforts in the United States. San Francisco decriminalized plant-based psychedelics with unanimous approval! 🍄🌱 Some headlines around this announcement are misleading. Decriminalization means that those using psychedelics will not be investigated, arrested or prosecuted. This does not mean that psychedelics are legalized in SF, yet.
Is the market ready for Psychedelic therapeutics to be approved?
In this article written by Amirah Al Idrus, she dives into the challenges Psychedelic therapeutic companies are facing bringing therapies to the market, including obstacles set by the FDA, formulation challenges, and business models. Combining a psychedelic therapeutic dose with supervised therapy is the current approach for FDA approval, which could scale into existing clinics nationwide.
Psychedelic Sector Events
Wavepaths is a company creating music for Psilocybin assisted therapy. Their launch event is today, Sept 14 at 6pm – 9pm CEST | 9am – 12pm PST. Link for free registration. The event will include a 90 minute Deep Listening experience. If you join the launch event, please consider preparing the following equipment ahead of the session: your best headphones or external sound system, an eye mask to support full immersion in the music, and a sweater or blanket to hand for warmth and comfort.
Next week is the International Conference on Psychedelic Research (ICPR) in Amsterdam. Conference is completely sold out to attend in person, otherwise I would be there. I’ll be tuning in virtually and writing daily recaps on Twitter.
What is Decentralized Science?
Decentralized Science (DeSci) is a growing movement to build public infrastructure for funding, creating, reviewing, owning, storing and sharing scientific knowledge by leveraging emerging technologies like blockchain and Web 3.0. Succinct report here. I had a lot of questions getting started and found Richard Sprague’s article and Sarah Hamburg’s Guide to DeSci, helpful to start understanding.
The DeSci movement is fueled by the collective power of communities assembled into DAOs, Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (Not sure what a DAO is? Explanation here). Biology DAOs are being created around various therapeutic areas, such as VitaDAO on longevity biotech, PsyDAO focused on the benefits of psychedelic therapies, ValleyDAO financing synthetic biology research, and LabDAO distributing access to laboratories to accelerate life science.
Feeling Bold about diving into DeSci? VitaDAO is one of the more mature BioDAOs. You can join their discord to connect with leaders in longevity, contribute to the movement to fund moonshot projects, and learn more about the space.
Events & Hacks
Event in Berlin this week
Berlin is my current home and one of my favorite things to do is share events happening in the community. This week highlights include: Berlin Blockchain Week, Berlin Art Week (Check out my curated list of events here), ETH Berlin - a hackathon and community event pushing the decentralized ecosystem forward and AsiaBerlinSummit - connecting startup ecosystems across Berlin and Asia.
Life Hacks
My LinkedIn in a jungle. Recently I’ve been frustrated with the lack of high-quality content and more clickbait. Seeking to clean up my newsfeed and get fresh perspectives, I found this hack to unfollow all of your connections. Now I’ve followed back a handful of incredible thought leaders and creators and enjoy LinkedIn scrolling again. **If you use this hack, make sure you follow me back to stay updated!**
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