10 ms·

I think they will soon be re-writing this article with the addition of "and rise again". I work in neurotech/sleeptech and one of the biggest challenges I see

I think they will soon be re-writing this article with the addition of "and rise again". I work in neurotech/sleeptech and one of the biggest challenges I see in our industry is, if not pure snake-oil, the over-hype of "backed by research". People have accused us of being snake-oil as well, and I get why they might think that if you haven't read or don't understand the science. I've seen products that claim to be Vagus Nerve stimulators that are worn on the wrist, nowhere near the vagus nerve. Products that claim to mimic the "magnetic frequency of hormones". We've also got the current "It's got electrolytes" craze which is kinda crazy that we've truly replicated idiocracy. For those curious, I'm the co-founder of affectablesleep.com

syncsynchalt 4mo ago
The article is about the literal oil of boiled snake meat, or at least the product that purported to be that.
dabbz 4mo ago
Most of that site reads as a "trust us, sound makes you heal!" I don't see a single thing there that tries to explain the correlation between bumping your brain with sound and "restoration". It doesn't explain what it restores, why it works better than nothing. Honestly this website doesn't seem to even be trying to sell anything. "Help your sleep" how? "doesn't make you sleep longer" but what does it do instead? Do I feel more restored when I wake up even with a shorter sleep time? It's not even trying to sell me on a specific outcome that I John Everyman is facing. Snake oil things are typically very light on details and this site is also light on details. Maybe it's a victim of form over function? The site's design looks nice but has very low information density.
- pedalpete 4mo ago
  Fair criticisms. However, there are FDA limitations on what you can say regarding devices that both measure and affect biomarkers and neuromarkers while the user is unconscious. This is why we describe the neural function of sleep, but can't specifically get into details regarding increases in slow-wave activity, 15% decrease in early night cortisol, 14.5% increase in HRV, etc etc. We can link to the research, but can't say "this is what we do". We are relying on user testimonials, which we are gathering through our beta testing and beyond. At the same time, we do describe the "clearer thinking", "immune function", "stress" etc about half way down the page. It's something we will continue to get better at.
  - com2kid 4mo ago
    I understand your subscription model but I honestly hope you don't have large backend costs. If the device came with a year free, or even a 6 month subscription, sure. But over $500 for a sleep aid is asking a lot.
    - pedalpete 4mo ago
      The back-end costs aren't high. We decided to go with a low device cost and subscription to make it cost effective to purchase when finances allow us to get to a monthly instead of yearly subscription.
      - com2kid 4mo ago
        > We decided to go with a low device cost When I worked on Microsoft Band, we wanted to have really nice side buttons. Great feel, not only the material, but the perfect spring tension, a great clicking sound, everything. We had someone who obsessed over them month after month, trying different polishes, colors, materials, spring types, everything. $2 a button, 2 buttons, $4 total on the BOM. Absurd. Yes the buttons were great, but we couldn't justify $4 for them. But that was the best any of our suppliers were able to do for metal buttons. We had spun off the Xbox accessories team, so we really knew buttons, but we really knew plastic buttons of a certain type. Metal buttons were kicking our butts. Then someone asked: "have we tried a watch supplier?" So yeah, like 25 cents per button for the exact same buttons. It wasn't that our other suppliers were ripping us off, they just weren't setup to make the type of buttons we needed, in those quantities, at the price we needed. So what I'm saying is, your base product is already expensive. It costs the same as an entire smart watch capable of running an operating system. You probably have lots of specialized components, lots of custom hardware, but your base price is already high and I hope you don't have any $4 buttons in the product, they are easy to overlook. I also get it is because you are doing small batch runs, and you are amortizing all the tooling and dev work over a small number of units, but you are not low cost. You are an unknown product selling adjacent to a bunch of snake oil people, if you were just $200 by itself I could maybe see it as an impulse buy to try out, but plus the subscription, ouch.
sqircles 4mo ago
Does the idea of submitting one's self to using something like this not terrify anyone else? The more true the effectiveness of these products become, the more they have the possibility to do the inverse on accident (or potentially on purpose), no?
- pedalpete 4mo ago
  I think it should. Our system is closed-loop and we monitor the real-time change in brain-wave activity. The process is very precise, and must be (80ms window for a 50ms pulse). When we first started, many in the sleep community were against using these techniques. A significant number of the studies look specifically at safety, and often people report to these as "null results" when in fact what was being examined was the potential negative impact. One example is the study on metabolic function [1], which showed no result in healthy men. It did not harm their metabolic function, though it also didn't improve it (though I'm not sure how you would measure improvement in healthy metabolic function). For our company, there are many modalities and capabilities we are building for the future, we began with auditory stimulation and this one in particular due to the low-risk and volume of research. [1] https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psyneuen.2018.08.028 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psyneuen.2018.08.028
skeeter2020 4mo ago
[flagged]
alexjplant 4mo ago
> the current "It's got electrolytes" craze The modern emphasis on electrolytes is directionally correct but ultimately silly. Most electrolyte satchets and drinks are just overpriced salt water with artificial flavoring and sweeteners. The majority of the Western world actually fails to meet their recommended intake of potassium and magnesium. The former is rare in beverages because of its bitter taste and possible drug interactions. Magnesium is also used somewhat sparingly because certain forms create GI distress. This is very unfortunate since both of these minerals are essential to overall health and of great benefit to the cardiovascular and circulatory systems when taken in recommended amounts. I dump Lite Salt (potassium and sodium chloride in equal amounts), Stevia, and powdered grapefruit into a bottle and shake to make my own electrolyte drink. It's dirt cheap and tastes like flat Fresca.
- Aerroon 4mo ago
  My quality of life improved by a significant amount when I started supplementing magnesium. Better sleep and a bunch of other things. It's actually scary how much of a difference something so simple (and cheap) made.
  - ccimmergreen 4mo ago
    Sounds like placebo effect. Which works too, but it doesn't have to be magnesium, zinc, or snake oil for that matter.
    - adrian_b 4mo ago
      Placebo effect may exist for someone who claims to sleep better with it, but there are effects that are definitely not placebo. In the water that I drink in the morning I dissolve small quantities of powders of magnesium bisglycinate and potassium citrate. Before starting to do this, after days with more intense physical effort, I frequently had nocturnal leg cramps. Since I began taking this regularly, I never had leg cramps again.
    - Nasrudith 4mo ago
      Understandable thing to test for but, in my experience magnesium has been legitimate for me. I've found it improved my ability to think personally and depression. The 'dosing effects' are the thing that convinced me it is a real effect. If I ran out of it and was say, waiting for it coming in the mail I could go for it for some days without noticing a difference. That level of 'some endurance, don't need it daily' seemed to suggest some real pharmacology behidn it. I also say for me because if you already have good levels of magnesium in your diet, it will have nothing to improve.
MrDrMcCoy 4mo ago
Are you folks going to support non-iPhones?
- pedalpete 4mo ago
  Yeah, my co-founder and I were discussing this yesterday. It was always in the plans, we're all actually on Android, but we wanted to get the user experience right on one platform and not spread ourselves too thin, but we're thinking AI makes a big difference here, so... no announcement yet, but it was never going to be iPhone forever. I still can't say for sure we'll have android at launch, but we'd like to.
  - MrDrMcCoy 4mo ago
    If you're all on Android, the inability to dogfood iOS will hinder that "get the user experience right", won't it? Not being an app developer, I'm curious why a cross-platform framework wasn't chosen. Aren't there several good ones to choose from these days?
    - pedalpete 4mo ago
      We have have iPhone dev phones, I just mean that for our daily use we don't use iOS. When I'm travelling I use iOS as my 2nd phone as well. So we dogfood it, but it's more like a snack specifically just for our app. The structure of the app is in rust, so that is shared across platforms. The challenge is in the UI elements, and the cross platform stuff just isn't as good as going native there. You end up building a bunch of custom components anyway. I'm also a bit wary of BLE on Android. iOS, is a bit more of a known entity. It isn't just iOS and Android either. Because we support researchers, we also have a web app that they use. It surprising how large our technology footprint is across services, firmware, web, and apps.
trashb 4mo ago
> "It's got electrolytes" But Brawndo's got what plants crave.

syncsynchalt 4mo ago

The article is about the literal oil of boiled snake meat, or at least the product that purported to be that.

dabbz 4mo ago

Most of that site reads as a "trust us, sound makes you heal!" I don't see a single thing there that tries to explain the correlation between bumping your brain with sound and "restoration". It doesn't explain what it restores, why it works better than nothing. Honestly this website doesn't seem to even be trying to sell anything. "Help your sleep" how? "doesn't make you sleep longer" but what does it do instead? Do I feel more restored when I wake up even with a shorter sleep time? It's not even trying to sell me on a specific outcome that I John Everyman is facing. Snake oil things are typically very light on details and this site is also light on details. Maybe it's a victim of form over function? The site's design looks nice but has very low information density.

pedalpete 4mo ago
Fair criticisms. However, there are FDA limitations on what you can say regarding devices that both measure and affect biomarkers and neuromarkers while the user is unconscious. This is why we describe the neural function of sleep, but can't specifically get into details regarding increases in slow-wave activity, 15% decrease in early night cortisol, 14.5% increase in HRV, etc etc. We can link to the research, but can't say "this is what we do". We are relying on user testimonials, which we are gathering through our beta testing and beyond. At the same time, we do describe the "clearer thinking", "immune function", "stress" etc about half way down the page. It's something we will continue to get better at.
- com2kid 4mo ago
  I understand your subscription model but I honestly hope you don't have large backend costs. If the device came with a year free, or even a 6 month subscription, sure. But over $500 for a sleep aid is asking a lot.
  - pedalpete 4mo ago
    The back-end costs aren't high. We decided to go with a low device cost and subscription to make it cost effective to purchase when finances allow us to get to a monthly instead of yearly subscription.
    - com2kid 4mo ago
      > We decided to go with a low device cost When I worked on Microsoft Band, we wanted to have really nice side buttons. Great feel, not only the material, but the perfect spring tension, a great clicking sound, everything. We had someone who obsessed over them month after month, trying different polishes, colors, materials, spring types, everything. $2 a button, 2 buttons, $4 total on the BOM. Absurd. Yes the buttons were great, but we couldn't justify $4 for them. But that was the best any of our suppliers were able to do for metal buttons. We had spun off the Xbox accessories team, so we really knew buttons, but we really knew plastic buttons of a certain type. Metal buttons were kicking our butts. Then someone asked: "have we tried a watch supplier?" So yeah, like 25 cents per button for the exact same buttons. It wasn't that our other suppliers were ripping us off, they just weren't setup to make the type of buttons we needed, in those quantities, at the price we needed. So what I'm saying is, your base product is already expensive. It costs the same as an entire smart watch capable of running an operating system. You probably have lots of specialized components, lots of custom hardware, but your base price is already high and I hope you don't have any $4 buttons in the product, they are easy to overlook. I also get it is because you are doing small batch runs, and you are amortizing all the tooling and dev work over a small number of units, but you are not low cost. You are an unknown product selling adjacent to a bunch of snake oil people, if you were just $200 by itself I could maybe see it as an impulse buy to try out, but plus the subscription, ouch.

sqircles 4mo ago

Does the idea of submitting one's self to using something like this not terrify anyone else? The more true the effectiveness of these products become, the more they have the possibility to do the inverse on accident (or potentially on purpose), no?

pedalpete 4mo ago
I think it should. Our system is closed-loop and we monitor the real-time change in brain-wave activity. The process is very precise, and must be (80ms window for a 50ms pulse). When we first started, many in the sleep community were against using these techniques. A significant number of the studies look specifically at safety, and often people report to these as "null results" when in fact what was being examined was the potential negative impact. One example is the study on metabolic function [1], which showed no result in healthy men. It did not harm their metabolic function, though it also didn't improve it (though I'm not sure how you would measure improvement in healthy metabolic function). For our company, there are many modalities and capabilities we are building for the future, we began with auditory stimulation and this one in particular due to the low-risk and volume of research. [1] https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psyneuen.2018.08.028 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psyneuen.2018.08.028

skeeter2020 4mo ago

[flagged]

alexjplant 4mo ago

> the current "It's got electrolytes" craze The modern emphasis on electrolytes is directionally correct but ultimately silly. Most electrolyte satchets and drinks are just overpriced salt water with artificial flavoring and sweeteners. The majority of the Western world actually fails to meet their recommended intake of potassium and magnesium. The former is rare in beverages because of its bitter taste and possible drug interactions. Magnesium is also used somewhat sparingly because certain forms create GI distress. This is very unfortunate since both of these minerals are essential to overall health and of great benefit to the cardiovascular and circulatory systems when taken in recommended amounts. I dump Lite Salt (potassium and sodium chloride in equal amounts), Stevia, and powdered grapefruit into a bottle and shake to make my own electrolyte drink. It's dirt cheap and tastes like flat Fresca.

Aerroon 4mo ago
My quality of life improved by a significant amount when I started supplementing magnesium. Better sleep and a bunch of other things. It's actually scary how much of a difference something so simple (and cheap) made.
- ccimmergreen 4mo ago
  Sounds like placebo effect. Which works too, but it doesn't have to be magnesium, zinc, or snake oil for that matter.
  - adrian_b 4mo ago
    Placebo effect may exist for someone who claims to sleep better with it, but there are effects that are definitely not placebo. In the water that I drink in the morning I dissolve small quantities of powders of magnesium bisglycinate and potassium citrate. Before starting to do this, after days with more intense physical effort, I frequently had nocturnal leg cramps. Since I began taking this regularly, I never had leg cramps again.
  - Nasrudith 4mo ago
    Understandable thing to test for but, in my experience magnesium has been legitimate for me. I've found it improved my ability to think personally and depression. The 'dosing effects' are the thing that convinced me it is a real effect. If I ran out of it and was say, waiting for it coming in the mail I could go for it for some days without noticing a difference. That level of 'some endurance, don't need it daily' seemed to suggest some real pharmacology behidn it. I also say for me because if you already have good levels of magnesium in your diet, it will have nothing to improve.

MrDrMcCoy 4mo ago

Are you folks going to support non-iPhones?

pedalpete 4mo ago
Yeah, my co-founder and I were discussing this yesterday. It was always in the plans, we're all actually on Android, but we wanted to get the user experience right on one platform and not spread ourselves too thin, but we're thinking AI makes a big difference here, so... no announcement yet, but it was never going to be iPhone forever. I still can't say for sure we'll have android at launch, but we'd like to.
- MrDrMcCoy 4mo ago
  If you're all on Android, the inability to dogfood iOS will hinder that "get the user experience right", won't it? Not being an app developer, I'm curious why a cross-platform framework wasn't chosen. Aren't there several good ones to choose from these days?
  - pedalpete 4mo ago
    We have have iPhone dev phones, I just mean that for our daily use we don't use iOS. When I'm travelling I use iOS as my 2nd phone as well. So we dogfood it, but it's more like a snack specifically just for our app. The structure of the app is in rust, so that is shared across platforms. The challenge is in the UI elements, and the cross platform stuff just isn't as good as going native there. You end up building a bunch of custom components anyway. I'm also a bit wary of BLE on Android. iOS, is a bit more of a known entity. It isn't just iOS and Android either. Because we support researchers, we also have a web app that they use. It surprising how large our technology footprint is across services, firmware, web, and apps.

trashb 4mo ago

> "It's got electrolytes" But Brawndo's got what plants crave.