Welcome back to the Daily Dumbbell, the daily newsletter that believes fully in the saying: Never let em guess your next move.

Today’s Twitter Tuesday doubles as the research roundup! Because we rounded up so damn much research for you. No need for two sections today

Let’s dive in!

Twitter Tuesday

This Tweet from the Liver Doc is one of the best and most thorough critiques of a problem we have seen in a long time.

Ever heard of Brandolini’s Law? We’ve talked about it but never named it before. Mostly because we didn’t know it had a name!

AKA The Bullshit Asymmetry Principle. The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it.

Let’s take a practical look.

We know everyone loves Huberman, and we enjoy his podcast from time to time, but he’s very guilty of exaggerating the science especially when it comes to supplements.

The Claim:

Melatonin only helps you fall asleep. It doesn’t help you STAY asleep. For that Bro Oprah recommends his patented sleep cocktail:

Magnesium Threonate, Apigenin & L-Theanine.

The Problem:

As the Tweet author lays out so well, not all sleep disorders are the same.

First of all, do you even have a sleep disorder? Are you laying in bed on your phone for an hour before you go to bed? Are you drinking coffee in the afternoon/too close to bedtime? If you answered yes to either of these questions… you don’t need supplements. You need to stop it!

But a few examples:

1. Cirrhosis patients have sleep disorders that require management with ammonia lowering therapies and severe cases can only be reversed with a liver transplant.

2. Patients with alcohol use disorders have sleep disorders that require management with de-addiction therapies along with sedatives.

3. Sleep disorders in the ICU set up has different causes.

4. People with mental health disorders have associated sleep disorders.

5. Certain sleep disorders have no identifiable causes and are called "idiopathic."

Hopping on a podcast and prescribing a “sleep cocktail” to millions of impressionable listeners who haven’t actually had their problem diagnosed isn’t only irresponsible, it’s just plain unhelpful.

The Other Problem:

He claims that a. Melatonin only helps you fall asleep, not keep you asleep. But his patented cocktail does just that and this is supported by peer reviewed research.

Melatonin has A TON of data behind it. Showing it’s effectiveness at:

Improving sleep onset latency & total sleep time in children & adults

Melatonin Treatment had positive effects on overall sleep quality in adults with:

• respiratory diseases

• metabolic disorders

• primary sleep disorders

BUT NOT in adults with mental disorders or neurodegenerative diseases.

Here’s a meta analysis that showed melatonin decreases sleep onset latency, increases total sleep time and improves overall sleep quality.

Here’s another meta analysis that shows that the timing and dosage matters quite a bit when taking melatonin. But that it did improve both sleep onset & the quality of sleep when taken correctly.

No mention of dosage or timing in his recommendation hmmmm?

Looking at the body of research, we’d feel very comfortable saying melatonin does increase total sleep time, total sleep quality and reduces time to sleep. It also has beneficial effects in specific groups of patients.

The Other Other Problem:

The lack of evidence in his cocktail…

The “solid peer reviewed evidence” he alludes to… simply doesn’t exist.

No conclusive evidence that magnesium, dietary or supplemented has any actual effect on sleep

No evidence at all that magnesium plays any part in mood disorders.

This review says the quality of literature just isn’t good enough to recommend magnesium for insomnia.

Ooh ok a study on Apigenin! It says any benefit to sleep is purely speculative…

A very well constructed randomized double blind placebo-controlled trial showed no benefit to sleep

Another Meta Analysis shows very little evidence to suggest Apigenin does anything for sleep.

We’re going to skip the L-Theanine research. The only proposed benefit was shown in mice. Human studies have yet to show anything at all.

And lastly a fantastic systematic review & meta analysis that showed Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is the best treatment for Insomnia. Strange… no mention of sleep cocktails pushed by social media personalities…

Was it an oversight? Or something worse…

The REAL BIG Problem

Or, possibly, we shouldn’t trust scientists who have paid affiliate deals with supplement companies. Huberman specifically has partnered with Momentous, a gigantic supplement company worth north of $100M.

You can get a 30 day supply from Momentous for:

Magnesium Threonate $49.95
Apigenin $29.95
L-Theanine $39.95

Just doing a little quick maths here, but it looks like Huberman’s sleep cocktail will run you just under $1,500/year. Not counting shipping & handling.

If you made it all the way through that, kudos to you!

If not and you skipped to the bottom, this illustrates the problem as well as anything we could write. A 36 second clip is very easy to listen to and get excited about.

Compare that to the amount of time it would take you to read all of the above… especially if you clicked on a few of the research links… Insane.

We hope you enjoyed today’s Newsletter! Let us know how we did below and we’ll see you back here tomorrow!