This is the What’s meant for you - Health & Nature a newsletter that curates ideas across health, investing, startups, and nature.
🧬 Health
As a pharmacist our health as individuals and collectively in never from my mind. 🩺
Time for lights off?
Artificial light at night is widespread, from car headlights to streetlamps, and disrupts behaviors of various species. Short-wavelength blueish white lights, like LEDs, cause sleep issues in humans and affect other species' behaviors.
White-blue light proliferation is linked to the rise of energy-efficient LEDs in the early 2000s.
Amy McDermott writer at Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) highlights some solutions.
The solutions to this are achievable - options like dimming lights, directing them downwards, or using longer-wavelength bulbs seem straightforward.
However, implementation of theses fixes is challenging due to a lack of unified governance, driven by industry recommendations, municipal rules, and laws.
Read the full article here. H/T Satchin Panda - Professor at the SALK Institute for the find.
🩺 Health startup or trends
Unlocking lifestyle data is the key to opening up chronic illnesses hold 🔑
Lifestyle changes or interventions could prevent (delay the offset of) ±80% of chronic illness (high cholesterol, hypertension, obesity). Yet pharmaceutical interventions (medication) is the preferred option.
This makes sense when you think most primary care physicians have little more than 10 minutes with their patients. Far too little time to dig into contributing lifestyle factors and changes.
I personally believe the convergence of AI and wearable technology will be a huge unlock in lifestyle medicine.
Flair Health is positioning themselves to ride this wave.
Founded by healthtech veterans Shobha Dasari and Diva Sharma, Flare is building a
“platform for clinicians to leverage patient lifestyle data to treat the core drivers of chronic disease, such as diabetes and heart disease, through personalized interventions. Their software analyzes hundreds of lifestyle data points not traditionally analyzed in a primary care visit and creates structured recommendations uniquely suited for a patient.”
As lifestyle medicine grows in popularity I’m excited to see what will happen in this space.
🌎 Nature
Floating gardens of the Aztec
I love learning about lost or ancient agricultural techniques. I believe they can inspire breakthroughs in modern practices.
Shoutout to Sam Knowlton for this find.
Tenochtitlan, Aztec capital, was founded in 1325 on marshland surrounded by lakes. Here the Aztecs developed advanced aqueduct systems to transport water and drain marshlands. They created raised rectangular beds using mud and organic matter, lined with native willows.
Continuous addition of lake sediments, plant residue, and manure enriched chinampas beds. Allowed continuous cultivation of numerous edible plants and integration of animals. Study even reveals higher microbial diversity in cultivated chinampas soil compared to non-cultivated.
Why is this relevant?
The chinampas system presents a solution to urban expansion challenges, offering space-efficient agriculture, biodiversity promotion, sustainable water management, carbon sequestration, and community engagement in the face of traditional practices' unsustainability due to land scarcity and environmental issues as cities grow.
Further reading:
🌍 Climate/Agritech startup of week
Tools not produce
Freight Farms are on a mission to “make fresh food accessible to anyone, anywhere”.
Their container farm allow their customers to get fresh produce around the world - from Alaska to Argentina. Their container farms, equipped with Hydroponics and Closed Environment Agriculture (CEA) technology allow farmers to grow high quality and sustainable produce all year round regardless of location.
Container farming offers numerous benefits, such as year-round cultivation regardless of land access, enhanced food safety, transparency, and reduced food-borne illness risk, enabling growth in limited spaces with no need for extensive labor, leading to high-quality produce and a platform for positive change through sustainable practices and local business development.
Founded in 2013 by Brad McNamara and Jon Friedman, Freight Farms mission is “to create a global infrastructure to revolutionize local access to food”.
🌱 Rewilding
Scratching an itch exploring rewilding 🏕️
📸 Rewilding photo of the week
Well a video this week instead.
Source - Bringing back the Carpathian water buffalo to the wetland ecosystem around the Danube Delta.
👋 Parting words
Thanks for reading! I had a lot of fun putting this one together. If you learned something hit the “like” ❤️ button below.
Until next time,
Eoghan