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Comment by pedalpete | Hacker News Reader

I think the "slowly then all at once" theory can be applied here, as well as an "S" curve.

It is unlikely any researcher looking at longevity in the 1920s would have predicted the impact of medical advances of the next 40 years.

Multiple converging technologies suggest we could be at an inflection point again.

Personally, we work in enhancing the restorative function of sleep with early research showing positive impacts in Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.

There is a theory that if we can slow the natural decline of sleep's restorative function, we slow age related metabolic function, cognitive decline, and immune system.

More details and links to research at https://affectablesleep.com

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My impression was that my mom's Parkinson's disease was disrupting her ability to sleep. More sleep was clearly better, and pretty hard to come by.

I just got some lithium for my mom to try for her alzhymers and will see if I can wrangle a "prescription" from her doctor, tommorow, so that I can have some paper to wave around at the nursing home. Dads 97, and moms 84, and they are staying in the same room, both medical people, my mom got a degree focused on geriatric psycology on top of her RN and dad was a pathologist. They both recently recieved the shingles vacine, which realy does appear to have significantly improved both of thier cognitive performance.

Interesting, I commented above about the research in slow-wave enhancement (the foundational science behind our technology) in Parkinson's, however, the potential in MCI and Alzheimer's including positive amyloid response in healthy older adults, and significant increases in deep sleep in people living with mild to moderate Alzheimer's.

During early night stimulation, stimulation has shown to decrease cortisol levels by 15% in healthy older adults. One theory is this helps people living with AD because they have a cortisol dysregulation which is disruptive to their sleep.

I'm sorry to hear about your mother.

Yeah, there is a relationship between sleep and Parkinson's and there is some preliminary research in what our technology does in that space.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.01.30.25320306v...

One of the challenges in improving sleep in these diseases is that just because we're improving sleep and people feel better because they are sleeping better, doesn't mean we're actually treating the underlying disease. It can be difficult to measure the difference.

The S curve here is not some physical law.

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