March 11, 2024: A link between microplastics and heart health, sleep hacking research for better brain health, and Hollywood is creating worm lovers. —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor | | | In more than 200 people undergoing surgery, scientists found that nearly 60 percent of patients had microplastics or even smaller nanoplastics in the plaque build-up in the main neck artery. Those patients were 4.5 times more likely to experience a heart attack, a stroke or death in the approximately three years after the surgery than were those whose arteries were plastic-free. Why this matters: Microplastics are everywhere. These plastic particles, which range from smaller than a single virus particle to as large as the width of a pencil, have been found in the trillions in oceans and tissues of sea animals, as well in drinking water, rain, air, human tissue and breast milk. Since they don't break down quickly and cells in the body that manage waste can't degrade them, microplastics accumulate in organisms. According to conservative estimates, most people ingest between 74,000 and 121,000 microplastic particles every year, likely more. But the effect that all these plastic pieces have on human health is still an area of ongoing research.
What the experts say: "This is a landmark trial," Robert Brook, a physician-scientist at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, says of the clinical study. "This will be the launching pad for further studies across the world to corroborate, extend and delve into the degree of the risk that micro- and nanoplastics pose." | | | Credit: Credit: Khanchit Khirisutchalual/Getty Images | | | In recent studies, researchers found that they could decrease the frequency of nightmares in some people. For five minutes a day, over the course of several weeks, study participants with recurring nightmares envisioned happier dream outcomes while listening to a repeated chord played on piano every 10 seconds. While they slept, a headband device detected when the participants entered REM sleep and transmitted the same piano chord into their brains. The overall frequency of nightmares declined.
Why this matters: Dream manipulation is one kind of sleep hack that neuroscientists are devising to better brain health. In the coming years, scientists hope to deliver an array of devices that people can use at home to improve sleep, enhance memory, prevent age-related memory decline, boost mental health and speed up stroke recovery.
What the experts say: Sleep might be the ideal time to enact real changes on brain health. "Sleep is an unguarded time. It's a time when our executive control, our rational thinking, our logical decision-making, our impulse control are turned off. So stimuli that manage to get in are processed differently and possibly more effectively," says Robert Stickgold, a cognitive neuroscientist at Harvard Medical School. | | | • A new nonprofit called Fairly Trained certifies that artificial intelligence models license copyrighted data (they often don't). | 6 min read | | | • Lead from old paint and pipes is still a deadly hazard in millions of U.S. homes. | 6 min read | | | Sandworms pursue a crowd in this scene from Dune: Part Two. Credit: Warner Bros./FlixPix/Alamy Stock Photo | | | • Massive-scale projects to reflect sunlight in order to cool the Earth (called solar radiation modification, or SRM) are fraught with environmental and ethical concerns, write Chandra Bhushan and Tarun Gopalakrishnan. Bhushan is president and CEO of the International Forum for Environment, Sustainability, and Technology and Gopalakrishnan is a Ph.D. candidate in climate policy at Tufts University. Solutions like SRM "draw attention and resources away from what should be a singular focus in a critical decade: decarbonization," they say. | 5 min read | | | Have you ever tried to get through a day without touching or using plastic? As journalist A. J. Jacobs documented in this compelling article in the New York Times last year, even walking from bed to bathroom in the morning is a plastic-riddled journey. As unavoidable as the material is, a good place to start if you'd like less plastic in your life, body or planet, is to cut down on single-use plastics (shopping bags, food containers, plastic utensils, etc.). I've read that some 20,000 plastic bottles are purchased every second (yes, you read that right). Carrying a reusable water bottle and cloth shopping bag seem like good steps that many of us could employ. | This newsletter is for you! If you have ideas for how to make it better, I'm all ears. Email me at newsletters@sciam.com. We'll be back tomorrow. | —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor | | Subscribe to this and all of our newsletters . | | | | Scientific American
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