Three-Minute Take-Home Test May Identify Symptoms Linked to Alzheimer's Disease

There is a growing body of research showing that increasing slow-wave activity during sleep can improve outcomes, including sleep quality[1], memory, and correlations with amyloid response[2].

Sadly, our latest grant application did not receive funding, but we are supporting other clinical researchers with our technology. Our technology is based on more than a decade of research with 50+ published, peer reviewed studies.

We focus on sleep directly rather than the disease, which means people do not have to wait years for regulatory approvals before they can feel day-to-day benefits.

For those curious about learning more, our approach and links to additional research are on our website https://affectablesleep.com .

Mild-to-moderate Alzheimer’s changes in sleep https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jagp.2024.07.002

Slow-wave activity, memory, and amyloid response https://doi.org/10.1093/ageing/afad228

yes, poor sleep quality leads to bad days, bad days lead to more bad sleep, it is a downward spiral and may impact many of us in our prime years, too.

All the best on your research and funding. Quality sleep has been undervalued, especially among work cultures that value overachieving at the expense of personal health.

Thanks. A researcher we work with has postulated that build-up of metabolic waste (amyloid and tau, among others) directly impairs the glymphatic system, leading to more build-up. A viscous cycle.

I don't think she's the first to postulate this, but I believe she is researching this relationship now.

Though work culture is an important one, we're somewhat more focused on the less self-imposed sleep challenges related to maternity and perimenopause/menopause.

What do you do with user data?

We don’t sell or share EEG data with third parties. The data is encrypted on the device and in storage. Our system processes it to show the user how they respond to stimulation, but company staff do not have direct access to individual user data. Internally we only look at anonymized or aggregated data to improve the technology.

Is that what you meant? I assumed you meant from a privacy perspective.

I have narcolepsy and it's hard to describe what an absolute fog I was in for years before diagnosis. The current best treatment is a powerful depressant taken at bed time and again middle of the night to induce deep sleep.

that's a cute Freudian slip (or deliberate joke) - viscous cycle - sure, amyloid and tau are probably very viscous when you poke at them with the laboratory utensil of your choice. And accumulation of them is like a viscious cycle of plaque accumulation and even worse clearance. It seems exponetial

Are you planning on allowing this device to work with Android? I'm asking because I can see on your website that it requires an iphone currently.

Yeah, we definitely will have Android.

Almost everyone on our team is on Android, but we wanted to iterate on the platform that most users are on and focus on getting that experience right.

Sales will somewhat depend on when we bring on someone to pick up the Android front-end.

We're a really small team, and with hardware, firmware, services, and apps, the engineering footprint becomes quite large.

What often doesn't get factored in is manufacturing test rigs, plus we have software to support clinical research.

I'm not complaining about it, but holding off on Android seemed to be the right move, as we can't remove any of the other functions. We've had quite a few requests for Android.

Is that gabapentin? Or is there something else that is the go to these days?

There was a comment on reddit a few days ago from someone with narcolepsy who was looking for a sleep tracker.

Sadly, our technology does not "induce" deep sleep.

It is suspected that the reason the Alzheimer's study showed such an increase in deep sleep was due to decreased cortisol as a result of stimulation, but that is just a theory at this point.

Studies do show a decrease in night-time cortisol (https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-017-02170-3) early in the night during stimulation.

Came here to say this. Also lol:

> And accumulation of them is like a viscious cycle

I don’t know what this slip meant though ;-)

LOL :)

Unintentional, but I like it!

Was really interested in this until I saw it was another static hardware product with a subscription as if it were a service.

If the toilet was invented today, plumbers would all be telling us how $1/shit is a steal.

Here I sit, broken-hearted...

Sodium oxybate. And yeah most commercial sleep trackers are not going to work for someone with such disordered sleep. There have been retail EEGs available but they never catch on.

Great incentive to hack it open (like people did with eight sleep) or use prior art for an open source version.

Consumer Poop Index, used to be a dime

Does it back up that it increases deep sleep? Just see word salads on the web page and: ”dont ask how it sounds, if it where a pill you wouldnt!”

Just red flags everywhere.

Fair point. To be clear, time in deep sleep does not increase. What increases is delta power, the primary measure researchers use for how restorative deep sleep is. This has been shown in the research, and our technology has been validated by an independent laboratory so that they could use it in their own clinical trial.

On our site we simplify the language. That is partly because of the regulations do not allow us to make clinical claims prior to approval, and partly because explaining the neuroscience in detail would overwhelm most visitors.

I link to the research so those interested can dive in deeper, and that is allowed.

really cool Im sorry to hear you didnt get funding. I dont know much but isnt the problem related to what causes the build up in teh first place? wasnt it scarring or something?

Getting better sleep has been a bit of a personal quest for me. Having said that, much as I would love to get the device, having been bitten by a bunch of subscription locked devices by startups, I have (reluctantly) settled on a policy of not purchasing hardware that can't work independently of the company.

Startups are hard at the best of times, hardware startups are harder. When the company making the hardware inevitably goes under, you are left with a useless piece of plastic that you paid a ton of money upfront for, and then paid a hefty sum every month on top.

That’s… actually a good way to have premium services on a bidet

Then I could theoretically use a shit coin to pay for an actual shit...

Thanks. We're used to not getting funding. It's part of the journey as a start-up and in research.

The build-up isn't scarring. It's misfolded proteins in the brain which stick in places they shouldn't and the glymphatic system which flushes cerebrospinal fluid through the brain removes the build-up of these protiens.

If you have poor sleep or lack of sleep, these proteins don't get removed and that build-up interferes and disrupts the firing of neurons.

Alzheimer's drugs are able to help remove the build-up, but unfortunately are not able to repair the damage. That's why they only slow progression of the disease, not treat it.

If slow-wave enhancement lives up to the potential, it would likely also only be preventative. It would be surprising if it was able to treat AD.

If you want to know more, a comment in this post has what I think may be the most thorough breakdown of AD. https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/in-defense-of-the-amyloid-h...

Great stuff thank you!

Thanks for this thoughtful response.

The reason we use a subscription is to keep the upfront cost much lower. It's important to us that we make better sleep as accessible as possible. A one-time payment makes that more challenging at this stage.

We also wanted to keep things simple at checkout. Too many options can be confusing, and at this early stage our priority is making it straightforward for people who want to try the technology.

It's a delicate balance.

Having to select 2 items for 1 sleep intervention is a weird way of keeping things simple..

To help you a bit: 1 is easier… So 1 hardware product working independently is what we want. If you must to appease the shareholders do a subscription…make it add some functionality that would be impossible without a subscription… But locking people in a subscription to “keep upfront cost lower” is devious at best. Add to the world..don’t (cash)grab.

Constructive criticism

Your first FAQ answer begins extremely apprehensively. Is that even the number one most frequently asked question? I would suggest heavily revising that answer or getting rid of it completely.

Many devices today support dark mode, such as my S24. The website does not display clearly in this mode.

Thanks for the feedback. You’re right about the first FAQ, it doesn’t read well on mobile and I’ll rework it.

On dark mode, we deliberately avoided it. Most sleep products lean into dark, sleepy visuals, which makes sense if the goal is to help people fall asleep or stay asleep. Our product doesn’t do that, so we are careful not to give the impression that it does, even though sleep is at the center of what we build. Our hope is that the brightness of our brand doesn’t mislead people, or lets us prevent them from misleading themselves.

Does that make sense?

To me it does not make sense, but I'm not your PM. Just your target market.

Funny you should say that:

https://www.indiatoday.in/trending-news/story/china-toilets-...

It's understandable why you would need to do that. I'm not against subscriptions in cases like this.

From my side as a customer, here's what I would need to see before supporting you:

1. A one off payment to own the current version of the device. This must include the ability to download all of my data that I generate from using the device. It can be in raw, unporcessed form.

2. A subscription is acceptable but would pay for cloud based data processing, generating reports etc. Processing and storing my data, in other words

3. A clear privacy policy stating that you will never sell my data in either raw or processed form. But I assume as a medical device that's already in place?

I have a hard time believing it's about the complexity of having a toggle button to switch to "one time purchase" during checkout. The ability to make such a selection is the option which enables the product to be accessible to more users, not the other way around.

arent paid public restrooms commonplace in eu?

You're describing why your default aesthetic is not dark.

Dark mode however is just an accessibility concept, not really about aesthetics. For some people they work hard to make it aesthetically consistent. But honestly I think dark mode compatibility should not have to be a perfect replication

> The reason we use a subscription is to keep the upfront cost much lower. It's important to us that we make better sleep as accessible as possible. A one-time payment makes that more challenging at this stage.

Ugh. Just say "recurring revenue". We're not naive.

Theres foss EEG machines already. $300ish to buy a fully working "same device as The FDA version just sans-certification."

Much less if you want to build it yourself.