Collective Insights Blog

Melatonin's Role in Sleep Regulation: The Science Behind The Darkness Hormone

If you’re among those who regularly reach for melatonin as a holistic option to end an unhealthy sleep cycle, it’s smart to understand exactly how melatonin works.

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Debunking Sleep Debt: Can You Really Catch up on Lost Sleep?

We lost an hour of sleep every night last week because of a looming project due at the end of the workweek. Over the weekend we slept in, in an effort to recoup those precious Zzzs. Is that it? Have we paid back our sleep debt with no lasting consequences to our health? Here's what science has to say.

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Creating Great Habits for Sleep: An Interview with Molly Maloof, MD

If you can sleep, then you need sleep. Oftentimes people will sacrifice sleep in the name of productivity, but that actually makes you less effective and less productive. Dr. Molly Maloof is on the frontier of personalized medicine, medical technology, health optimization, and scientifically-based wellness endeavors. She joins us to share how sleep works and what we can do to get a better night’s sleep.

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How to Sleep According to Your Sleep Chronotype: An Interview with Michael Breus, PhD

Sleep is mysterious and most people don’t think about needing to learn how to sleep, but it's one of the most critical things for our health. The Sleep Doctor, Michael Breus, joins us to share his wisdom on resting well. He has an impressive background in sleep medicine that includes regularly contributing to the Dr. Oz Show, serving as the Sleep Expert for WebMD and writing several books.

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Sleep Advice & Wearable Sleep Tech: An Interview with Dan Gartenberg, PhD

Does wearable tech actually help you sleep better? Daniel Gartenberg joins us to answer this question. He shares his best tips to address your unique sleep challenges and offers suggestions for how to best utilize wearable sleep tech. Gartenberg has a Ph.D in Cognitive Psychology, and is an adjunct assistant professor at Penn State University.  His current research is focused upon accurately tracking sleep quality through wearable technology. But he doesn’t just want to measure it, he wants to make it better.

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Sleep Tips and Tricks For Improving Sleep Quality

Everyone knows how wonderful it feels to wake up after a refreshing sleep. But you may not know just how critical getting a full night of sleep is to your health and to achieving optimal mental performance. In this post, we're going to give you a sense of why sleep is so important to your brain, and offer some actionable sleep tips and tricks that will help you wake up feeling amazing.

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L-Tryptophan: Sources and Benefits

L-tryptophan is an essential amino acid. This means the body cannot synthesize it: it must be obtained from the diet. It’s been known for decades that L-tryptophan has niacin equivalent activity in the body (i.e., we can make NAD+ molecules from it). L-tryptophan is unique because it’s the only way to build NAD+ that doesn’t start from vitamin B3. It does this by a de novo synthesis pathway, which creates a niacin molecule through a series of biological reactions. So, L-tryptophan’s inclusion would seem to be a natural fit in a formulation that wants to support boosting NAD+

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