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| Under the Microscope |
| Tiny doses of magic mushrooms |
The Research
The blind tests keep coming up empty. In one trial run from Chile, 34 adults took half a gram of dried mushroom or a dummy capsule. Mood, focus and creativity came out about the same. Most guessed which pill they had. Only the right guessers felt a lift. Two more blinded trials in 2025 found no real edge. |
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The Community
Thousands swear by it. The usual plan is a tenth of a full dose, one day on and two days off. The classic run lasts four to eight weeks, then a break. Users report calmer moods and easier focus. But it is illegal in most places. And no one has checked what years of it do to the heart’s valves. |
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| Reaction Time |
| Brake lights flash up ahead. How fast does your foot move? This one reads your processing speed — how quickly your brain turns what you see into what you do. Play three rounds and try to beat your first. |
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A new Exxon is rising, and Wall Street is repricing it
In the 1970s, three oil giants found it. They buried it to protect oil.
Sixty years later, one company finally cracked it.
Google just signed a 15-year deal. The biggest names in tech are moving in fast.
A new Exxon is rising, and Wall Street is still pricing it like a sleepy little energy stock.
That window does not stay open once the crowd wakes up.
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| Months of lying awake tracked with more strokes |
| Insomnia is not one bad night. Doctors mean trouble falling or staying asleep. It hits at least three nights a week. And it lasts three months or more. A European team has now pooled what that does to the brain. |
| Stefan Seidel led the work. He is at the Medical University of Vienna, and teamed up with the European Academy of Neurology. The team gathered nine studies of stroke, with more than 1.3 million people. Six could be combined. In those, insomnia came with a 26% higher risk of stroke. Across five other studies, poor sleepers were 28% more likely to land in hospital. |
| Let me explain how a sleep problem could reach your blood vessels. In good sleep, your blood pressure falls at night. That dip gives the small pipes in your head a rest. In insomnia, the body’s alarm system tends to stay switched on. Heart rate and pressure stay higher. It’s like an engine left idling all night. It never cools down. |
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Dementia and low mood showed up too. Those links were mixed. Treat insomnia as a warning light, not a verdict. |
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| I could be wrong about cause here. The authors say so plainly. Their pooled data cannot prove insomnia causes strokes. Sleeping pills cloud it too, since many poor sleepers take them. Still, I believe months of broken nights deserve a doctor, not a shrug. |
| The first fix is usually not a pill. Most guidelines name a short course of sleep-focused talk therapy. That course often includes the get-up rule we ran on September 10. I urge you to raise it at your next checkup if your nights have gone ragged for months. |
| Medical University of Vienna & European Academy of Neurology · Sleep Medicine Reviews · September 28, 2026 |
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| Check the seller before the claim |
| Health posts move fast. The proof moves slower. Jenna Smith’s team at the University of Sydney read 188 posts about the new Alzheimer’s blood tests. They came from Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. |
| The claims ran ahead. A third of the posts said the tests could screen people with no symptoms. Right now, the tests are meant for people who already have memory trouble. Fewer than one post in four named a study. And accounts with money on the line were three times as likely to push testing on people who felt fine. |
| So before you buy from a post, give it three quick checks. |
| The Protocol |
| When |
| Before you pay for any test, pill or gadget you first saw in a post or an ad |
| Duration |
| About two minutes |
| Rules |
| Ask who is talking, and whether they sell it. Look for one named study in people, with a comparison group. If the post never says to check with your doctor, skip it. |
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| Today’s hero makes a good test case. The mushroom posts are loud. The blinded trials are quiet. I urge you to try the check on the next post that catches your eye. |
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| Active bodies may guard aging ears |
| Your ears may track your legs. Jean Neils-Strunjas and her team at the University of South Carolina tested 150 adults aged 50 to 80. People in better physical shape had better hearing. Blood pressure, oddly, did not track with hearing at all. Activity also seemed to soften the tie between worse hearing and a smaller brain. Most volunteers were educated women, and it was one snapshot. So it points a direction. It doesn’t prove one. |
| University of South Carolina · Scientific Reports · 2026 |
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| When you feel foggy, you may be right |
| Trust your gut on a slow day. Brandon Gavett and Sarah Tomaszewski Farias at the University of California, Davis gave 62 healthy adults a smartwatch. Four times a day for a week, people rated how sharp they felt. Then the watch ran a quick speed and attention test. When people rated themselves below their usual, their scores dipped too. That held even after the team accounted for mood. One week and 62 people settle little. But your sense of a foggy day seems to carry real signal. |
| University of California, Davis · Neuropsychology · August 2026 |
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| Minding the grandkids tracked with sharper recall |
| Grandparents who help out scored higher. Flavia Chereches at Tilburg University followed 2,887 grandparents over 50 in England, from 2016 to 2022. Those who gave any care did better on memory and word tests. School runs, homework and sleepovers all counted. How often mattered less than helping at all. The slower slide over time showed up mainly in grandmothers. It’s a link, not proof. And the team notes that help given freely may differ from help under strain. The paper came out in January. |
| Tilburg University · Psychology and Aging · January 2026 |
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| Jim Kwik |
| Memory coach · author of Limitless · host of the Kwik Brain podcast |
| Kwik runs his mornings in a set order. He says a head injury in early childhood left him struggling at school. So he built his work on learning how to learn. The day starts in bed, going over his dreams. Then he makes the bed. Next comes a tall glass of water, a celery juice and a probiotic. He brushes his teeth with the hand he doesn’t write with. After that come three minutes of exercise and a cold shower. Then breathing drills and about 20 minutes of meditation. He sips an herbal tea of his own blend. He writes three work goals and three personal ones. And he aims to read a book a week. He admits he skips steps on some days. |
| Some of this has real support. Exercise, meditation and steady reading all have decent data behind them. The other-hand toothbrush is fun novelty, but I know of no trial that tested it. The cold shower, the celery and the tea rest mostly on taste. And Kwik is a coach, not a doctor or a scientist. Borrow the fixed order and the reading habit. The celery is optional. |
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